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So stupid, indeed, are they in this respect, that, in several instances, those which had escaped from the ships entered, and were recaught in the same traps as before. Jan. 14. An ermine, of which the tracks had been traced the preceding day up the Hecla's stern, and even on board her, Captain Lyon to-day succeeded in catching in a trap.
At the conclusion of the day's labour on the 19th, we had every prospect of getting to sea in forty-eight hours more; but, early on the following morning, when the ebb or northeasterly tide had made, and was assisted by a breeze from the southward, the whole body of sea-ice came forcibly in contact with the bay-floe, which was now so weakened by our cutting as to split the whole way from the edge up to the Hecla's stern, a little to the westward of the canal, the latter being almost immediately closed with a considerable crush, but without affecting the ships which lay beyond it.
Off the end of the reef the water deepened to six fathoms, and the Hecla's anchor was dropped in eight fathoms, half a mile within the reef, and close to the edge of the ice through which the canal was to be cut. The Griper arrived soon after, and by half past eight A.M. both ships were secured in the proper position for commencing the intended operations.
The ice across the entrance of the harbour as far as this spot, and the whole of that in the offing, of which we had here a commanding view from the Hecla's crow's-nest, was still quite continuous and unbroken, with the same appearance of solidity as it had during the middle of winter, except that the pools of water were numerous upon its surface.
Several heads of the musk-ox were picked up, and one of the Hecla's seamen brought to the boat a narwhal's horn, which he found on a hill more than a mile from the sea, and which must have been carried thither by Esquimaux or by bears: three or four brace of ptarmigan were killed, and these were the only supply of this kind which we obtained.
From six A.M. till six P.M. on the 17th, the thermometer stood generally from 55° to 60°; the latter temperature being the highest which appears in the Hecla's Meteorological Journal during this summer. It will readily be conceived how pleasant such a temperature must have been to our feelings after the severe winter which immediately preceded it.
They were almost immediately exposed to most terrific danger, being driven along the ice at a furious rate, frequently almost nipped by it. At one time the Hecla's stern was lifted more than five feet out of the water, and her rudder unslung by a violent jerk. Had another floe backed the one which lifted her, the ship must inevitably have turned over or parted amidships.
More temperate Weather. House rebuilt. Quantity of Ice collected on the Hecla's lower Deck. Meteorological Phenomena. Conclusion of Theatrical Entertainments. Increased Sickness on board the Griper. Clothes first dried in the open Air. Remarkable Halos and Parhelia. Snow Blindness. Cutting the Ice round the Ships, and other Occurrences to the Close of May.
Everything was so quiet at nine o'clock as to induce me to venture up the hill abreast of us, in order to have a view of the newly-discovered land to the southwest, which, indeed, I had seen indistinctly and much refracted from the Hecla's deck in the morning.
"Ay, when we set our strength against thine, lord," answered Skallagrim; "but look: the blood runs from thy neck the spear-wound has broken out afresh." "So it is, surely," said Eric. Then he washed the wound and bound it up, thinking little of the matter. But that night, according to his custom, Eric sat on the edge of the gulf and looked at the winter lights as they played over Hecla's snows.
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