VOYAGE TO GREENLAND. 
95 
instances, been raised so high above the surface, 
as to throw out all the crew, and to expose both 
men and boats to one common destruction of which, 
the following circumstance is related by Captain 
Scoresby. In one of my earliest voyages to the 
whale fishery, a harpooner of our ship struck a 
whale, when, in descending, it projected the boat 
and all its crew to the height of some yards in the 
air.” 
The ship was kept close under the lee 
June 13 . ^ where, though the wind 
was blowing a gale, we lay in smooth water, and 
towards the evening saw a whale, fast travelling to 
the southward, which neither our boats nor those of 
other vessels could prevent. 
The gale continued with increased fury 
June 14 . whole fleet of 
vessels, either got under close-reefed topsails to 
leeward of the field of ice, or moored to it. This 
apparent continent, it is presumed, forms one un- 
interrupted sheet of ice, extending to the western 
land upwards of one hundred miles : and, with the 
exception of that part next the ocean, where there 
are occasional openings, not a fissure was observa- 
ble in it. Two vessels, we could perceive, were in 
a perilous situation, but at that period no assistance 
could be rendered them ; they were beset by ice, 
and must remain imprisoned, till liberated by the 
separation of the floes, either from the influence of 
the wind, or from some other favourable contin- 
gency. The captains of two Greenland ships came 
