104 
A RACE. 
of a great under-current to the northward. Their drift 
followed some system of advance entirely independent 
of the wind, and not apparently at variance with the 
received views of a great southern current. On the 
night of the 30th, while the surface ice or floe was 
drifting to the southward with the wind, the bergs 
were making a northern progress, crushing through 
the floes in the very eye of the breeze at a measured 
rate of a mile and a half an hour. The disproportion 
that uniformly subsists between the submerged and 
upper masses of a floating berg makes it a good index 
of the deep sea current, especially when its movement 
is against the wind. I noticed very many ice-mount- 
ains traveling to the north in opposition to both wind 
and surface ice. One of them we recognized five days 
afterward, nearly a hundred miles on its northern 
journey. 
In the so-called night, “all hands” were turned to, 
and the old system of warping was renewed. The 
unyielding ice made it a slow process, hut enough 
was gained, to giye us an entrance to some clear wa- 
ter about a mile in apparent length. While we were 
warping, one of these current-driven bergs kept us 
constant company, and at one time it was a regular 
race between us, for the narrow passage w^e were 
striving to reach would have been completely barri- 
caded if our icy opponent had got ahead. 
This exciting race, against wind and drift, and with 
the Rescue in tow, was at its height when we reached 
a point where, by warping around our opponent, we 
might he able to make sail. Three active men were 
instantly dispatched to prepare the warps. One took 
charge of the hawser, and another of the iron crow or 
chisel which is used to cut the hole ; the third, a 
