£88 
A VOYAGE TO SFITZBERGEN. 
took a direction first to the S.8.E. and afterwards 
to the South, and the sea appeared open to the 
South-east, which made many on board flatter them¬ 
selves that the success of their voyage was certain; 
but this delusive appearance was of short continu¬ 
ance. In the course of the next ten days they 
were so much incommoded and entangled with 
floating ice, that they thought it necessary to look 
to their retreat. In the evening of the 26 th they 
were forced into a bay of the North-eastern, or of 
the most eastern part of Nova Zembla, for they 
had passed round the North end of the Island ; and 
the next day the ice closed upon them with so 
much violence, that the vessel was lifted or forced 
upon it as if aground from one end to the other. 
In this danger they set to work to make the best 
preparation they could with their boats, in case of 
being obliged to quit the ship. On the 28th the ice 
separated a little, and the ship nearly recovered her 
proper position, when the ice again closed upon her, 
and the frame of the ship, and the ice all around 
cracked in so frightful a manner as to fill them with 
apprehension that she would break in pieces. “ The 
ice was in greater heaps, and more pressed under the 
vessel on the side whence the current came than on 
the other, and she had at first leaned much; but at 
