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Updated: May 6, 2025
The manoeuvre of Daggett was begun under circumstances that scarcely admitted of any alternative, though it might be questioned if it were not the best expedient that offered. Now that the schooners were so far within the field-ice, the water was much less broken, though the undulations of the restless ocean were still considerable, and the grinding of ice occasioned by them was really terrific.
Occasionally it blew in gales, sending down upon the group a swell that made great havoc with the outer edges of the field-ice. Every day or two a couple of hands were sent up the mountain to take a look-out, and to report the state of matters in the adjacent seas.
With a fair wind we soon ran clear of the field-ice, and by noon had only the stray islands floating far and near upon the ocean.
Yards were braced up, sheets flattened, and the helm tended. The close proximity of the rocks on the one side, and the secret presentiment of there being more field-ice on the other, kept every one wide awake. The two masters, in particular, were all eyes and ears.
The half-hour that succeeded was one of engrossing interest. It settled the point whether the schooners could or could not eat their way into the wind sufficiently to weather the danger. Fragment after fragment was passed; blow after blow was received; until suddenly the field-ice appeared directly in front. It was in vast quantities, extending to the southward far as the eye could reach.
The ship wore round fairly, the yards were steadied, and we stood off on the other tack, leaving behind us, directly under our larboard quarter, a large ice island, peering out of the mist, and reaching high above our tops; while astern, and on either side of the island, large tracts of field-ice were dimly seen, heaving and rolling in the sea.
The sun had come up brightly; the snow was swept off the decks and ashes thrown upon them so that we could walk, for they had been as slippery as glass. It was, of course, too cold to carry on any ship's work, and we had only to walk the deck and keep ourselves warm. The wind was still ahead, and the whole ocean, to the eastward, covered with islands and field-ice.
"Ah, we are well away from that fellow!" said Mr Meldrum rubbing his hands; but his congratulations were cut short in a moment by the look- out man forward the Norwegian sailor, who as an old whaler was accustomed to Antarctic sights and sounds shouting out that there was field-ice ahead, and that from the crashing of the floes he thought the ship must be near the pack.
It does look wonderfully like a sail, and a sail pretty well surrounded by ice, too!" There was no mistake in the matter. The white canvass of a vessel was plainly visible, over a vast breadth of field-ice, a little to the northward of the island that lay directly opposite the cove. Although the sails of this stranger were spread, it was plain enough he was closely beset, if not actually jammed.
"It may be so the currents run all manner of ways, and field-ice may pass the shoals, though a berg never can. I do not remember, nevertheless, to have ever seen even a floe within the group nothing beyond large cakes that have got adrift by some means or other." "I have, sir, though only once.
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