A BOAT-NIP. 
329 
us. It was uncomfortable toil. We pushed forward 
our little weather-worn craft, her gunwales touching on 
both sides, till the toppling ice began to break down 
on us, and sometimes, critically suspended, met above 
our heads. 
One of these passages I am sure we all of us re¬ 
member. We were in an alley of pounded ice-masses, 
such as the receding floes leave when they have crushed 
the tables that were between them, and had pushed 
our way far enough to make retreat impossible, when 
the fields began to close in. There was no escaping a 
nip, for every thing was loose and rolling around us, 
and the floes broke into hummock-ridges as they came 
together. They met just ahead of us, and gradually 
swayed in toward our boat. The fragments were 
already splitting off and spinning over us, when we 
found ourselves borne up by the accumulating rubbish, 
like the Advance in her winter drift; and, after resting 
for twenty minutes high out of water, quietly lowered 
again as the fields relaxed their pressure. 
Generally, however, the ice-fields came together 
directly, and so gradually as to enable us to anticipate 
their contact. In such cases, as we were short-handed 
and our boat heavily laden, we were glad to avail our¬ 
selves of the motion of the floes to assist in lifting her 
upon them. We. threw her across the lead by a small 
pull of the steering-oar, and let her meet the approach¬ 
ing ice upon her bow. The effect, as we found in every 
instance, was to press her down forward as the floe 
advanced against her, and to raise her stern above the 
