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Roswell remonstrated ere the leading vessel entered, and pointed out to Daggett the fact that the bergs were evidently closing, each instant increasing their movement, most probably through the force of attraction. It is known that ships are thus brought in contact in calms, and it is thought a similar influence is exercised on the ice-bergs.
Accordingly, on the 5th, being thirty miles beyond the spot in which we had before contended with numerous difficulties from ice, not a piece was to be seen, except one or two solitary bergs; and it was not till the following day, in latitude 72° 45′, and longitude 64° 44′, or about one hundred and twenty-seven miles to the eastward of where we made our escape on the 9th of September, 1824, that we fell in with a body of ice so loose and open as scarcely to oblige us to alter our course for it.
There was a long easterly swell with a light northerly breeze, and the weather was clear and fine. Numerous bergs lay outside the pack.
In support of this view I notice that most of the pressure ridges are formed by pieces of a sheet which did not exceed one or two feet in thickness also it seems that the screwed ice which we have passed has occurred mostly in the regions of bergs. On one side of the tabular berg passed yesterday pressure was heaped to a height of 15 feet it was like a ship's bow wave on a large scale.
Thus threading my way I drove before the seas and wind, striking a piece of ice but once only, and that a small lump which hit the vessel on the bow and went scraping past, doing the fabric no hurt; but often forced to slide perilously close by the bergs. I needed twenty instead of one pair of eyes.
My idea had been to approach the face of the glacier from the top, but I found this to be as impossible, by reason of the crevasses, as it had been to approach it from the sea on account of the falling bergs.
Developed by such a process, the thousands of bergs which throng these seas should keep the air and water in perpetual commotion one fearful succession of explosive detonations and propagated waves. But it is only the lesser masses falling into deep waters which could justify the popular opinion.
The passage between the bergs now became quite straight, reasonably broad, and was so situated as regarded the gale, as to receive a full current of its force.
"It's a pity this isn't at the north pole," said the professor, who was varnishing dried fish in the cabin, where this conversation took place. "Why?" asked Frank. "Because, if it had been, there might have been a polar bear on that iceberg. I have read that sometimes they drift away on bergs that become detached and are sighted by steamers quite far south."
We reached the mouth of Taylor Bay about two or three o'clock in the afternoon, when we had a view of the open ocean before we entered the bay. Many large bergs from Glacier Bay were seen drifting out to sea past Cape Spencer.
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