SUTHERLAND ISLAND. 
257 
ivory-gulls and jagers dipping their wings in the 
curling waves. They seemed the very same birds we 
had left two years before screaming and catching fish 
in the beautiful water. We tried to make our first rest 
at Sutherland Island; but we found it so barricaded 
by the precipitous ice-belt that it was impossible to 
land. I clambered myself from the boat’s mast upon 
the platform and filled our kettles with snow, and 
then, after cooking our supper in the boats, we stood 
away for Hakluyt. It was an ugly crossing: we had 
a short chopping sea from the southeast; and, after a 
while, the Red Boat swamped. Riley and Godfrey 
managed to struggle to the Faith, and Bonsall to the 
Hope; but it was impossible to remove the cargo of 
our little comrade: it was as much as we could do to 
keep her afloat and let her tow behind us. Just at 
this time, too, the Hope made a signal of distress; and 
Brooks hailed us to say that she was making water 
faster than he could free her. 
The wind was hauling round to the westward, and 
we could not take the sea abeam. But, as I made a 
rapid survey of the area round me, studded already 
with floating shreds of floe-ice, I saw ahead the low 
gray blink of the pack. 1 remembered well the expe¬ 
rience of our Beechy Island trip, and knew that the 
margin of these large fields is almost always broken by 
inlets of open water, which give much the same sort of 
protection as the creeks and rivers of an adverse 
coast. We were fortunate in finding one of these and 
fastening ourselves to an old floe, alongside of which 
Vol. II.—17 
