OUR REST BOWER GONE. 
71 
“ We steadied and did some petty warping, and got 
the brig a good bed in the rushing drift; but it all 
came to nothing. We then tried to beat back through 
the narrow ice-clogged water-way, that was driving, a 
quarter of a mile wide, between the shore and the 
pack. It cost us two hours of hard labor, I thought 
skilfully bestowed; but at the end of that time, we were 
at least four miles off, opposite the great valley in the 
centre of Bedevilled Reach. (16) Ahead of us, farther to 
the north, we could see the strait growing still nar¬ 
rower, and the heavy ice-tables grinding up, and clog¬ 
ging it between the shore-cliffs on one side and the 
ledge on the other. There was but one thing left for 
us 5—to keep in some sort the command of the helm, 
by going freely where we must otherwise be driven. 
We allowed her to scud under a reefed foretopsail; all 
hands watching the enemy, as we closed, in silence. 
“At seven in the morning, we were close upon the 
piling masses. We dropped our heaviest anchor with 
the desperate hope of winding the brig; but there was 
no withstanding the ice-torrent that followed us. We 
had only time to fasten a spar as a buoy to the chain, 
and let her slip. So went our best bower! 
“Down we went upon the gale again, helplessly 
scraping along a lee of ice seldom less than thirty feet 
thick; one floe, measured by a line as we tried to 
fasten to it, more than forty. I had seen such ice only 
once before, and never in such rapid motion. One up¬ 
turned mass rose above our gunwale, smashing in our 
bulwarks, and depositing half a ton of ice in a lump 
