NO OPEN WATER VISIBLE. 
223 
a nap, which I rather needed,—fully expecting that by 
the time I awoke we should be beginning to get pretty 
clear of the pack. On coming on deck, however, four 
hours later, although we had reached away a con¬ 
siderable distance from the land, and had even passed 
the spot where—the day before—the sea was almost 
free,—the floes seemed closer than ever; and, what 
was worse, from the mast-head not a vestige of open 
water was to be discovered. On every side, as far as 
the eye could reach, there stretched over the sea one 
cold white canopy of ice. 
The prospect of being beset, in so slightly built a 
craft, was—to say the least—unpleasant; it looked 
very much as if fresh packs were driving down upon 
us from the very direction in which we were trying 
to push out, yet it had become a matter of doubt 
which course it would be best to steer. To remain 
stationary was out of the question; the pace at which 
the fields drift is sometimes very rapid, 1 and the 
1 Dr. Scorcsby states that the invariable tendency of fields of ice 
is to drift south-westward, and that the strange effects produced by 
their occasional rapid motions, is one of the most striking objects 
the Polar Seas present, and certainly the most terrific. They 
