ENTERING MELVILLE BAY. 
CHAPTER XIV. 
Our position, on entering this pack twenty-one days 
ago, was latitude 74° 08', longitude 59° 04'. Our ob- 
servations now gave us a latitude of 73° 54', longitude 
60° 06' — an average progress of about a mile a day. 
We had therefore been three weeks completely im- 
prisoned, and the season for useful search was rapidly 
flitting by, when, on the 27th of July, came the dawn- 
ing promise of escape. 
A steady breeze had been blowing for several days 
from the northward and westward, and under its in- 
fluence the ice had so relaxed, that, had not the wind 
been dead ahead, we should have attempted sails. 
Our floe surface, disturbed by these new influences, 
gave us a constantly-shifting topography. It was cu- 
rious to see the rapidity of the transformations. At 
