260 
GREENLAND VOYAGE. 
the tide or current was setting to the WSW., 
or almost directly to leeward, at the rate of 
nearly three knots), and eventually doubled the 
point of the eastern floe, where the width ex¬ 
panded to nearly a league. Finding this channel 
also closing, we penetrated the eastern boundary, 
consisting of a chain of floes, through which we 
fortunately discovered a passage. Then stretch¬ 
ing five or six miles to the eastward, we fell into 
a commodious opening.amid the floes, where we 
were enabled to reduce sail at the moment that it 
was indispensable so to do, on account of a great 
increase of the gale. The rain continued un¬ 
abated, descending almost in torrents. 
Soon after we reached a place of safety, we saw 
the Fame following us, under a pressure of canvas 
that few ships perhaps could have sustained. The 
Trafalgar, however, though she was considerably to 
windward of us at the time we doubled the point 
of difficulty, having inadvertently stood a little to 
the westward of it, (the captain not being aware 
of what was going forward,) was intercepted by 
the same point on her return. All exertions to 
weather it afterwards, it seems, were fruitless. 
The tide, indeed, set so fiercely to leeward, and 
the bight was so much contracted, that, in a short 
time, she was completely hemmed in, without 
room to make a tack. In the morning this ship 
