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Flags were hoisted and salutes fired to emphasise the fact, and they were acknowledged by an immense bear that came out upon the ice to welcome the ships. Hence fogs and occasional ice-floes hindered the navigation. Many very interesting scientific searches were made, and after the 23rd of August the sea was smooth and free from ice up to the delta of the Lena River.
Near the close of the century, Frobisher attempted to open up the secrets of the Arctic seas and find that passage to the north which remained closed to venturesome explorers until Sir Robert McClure, in 1850, successfully passed the icebergs and ice-floes that barred his way from Bering Sea to Davis Strait.
The 'James Caird' and 'Dudley Docker' had good sails and with a favourable breeze could make progress along the lane, with the rolling fields of ice on either side. The swell was heavy and spray was breaking over the ice-floes. An attempt to set a little rag of sail on the 'Stancomb Wills' resulted in serious delay.
And behind us, just above the horizon, a segment of purple sky where a storm was gathering a deep purple which was mirrored in the placid patches of open water, and darkened the ice-floes to a solemn, sombre hue. Elza was entranced, though she had made many trans-Polar trips.
The prodigious rafts of vegetation were hurried before the stream like ice-floes, and these masses having struck against a line of six noggurs, the vessels were literally swept away and buried beneath the great rafts, until they capsized and disappeared for ever in the deep channel. Late in the evening Ismail Pacha took leave and returned in his steamer to Khartoum.
But he was in a frame of mind in which a man is inaccessible to reason; by fair means or foul he meant to get across. Apart from the fog, it was a dark night; and above the island the Danube is at its widest, and the passage over the ice-floes the most difficult.
Presently I began to feel warm all over my body, despite my frozen clothing a condition attributable partly to the peculiar qualities of frozen food, and partly perhaps to the rasping in my interior, produced by the stiff walrus hair that I had eaten. It was now nearly dark, but we could see that the ice-floes were coming together, and crunching up a pudge of soft ice between them.
To drive across them in winter, when they were solidly frozen over, was easy; and in pleasant summer weather to cross in a row-boat was not a dangerous undertaking. But squalls at some seasons and floating ice at others were things to be feared. More than one instance is recorded where boats were crushed and passengers drowned, or saved only by scrambling upon ice-floes.
"Cornwallis was hot for attempting something of the sort, but sight of the ice-floes in the river served to cool him, so he is going into winter quarters and will not stir from his cantonments until spring, unless the river freeze strong enough for him to cross on the ice." "And what of the rebels?" "'T is sudden gone so out of fashion there is scarce one left.
I have saved you, and you deny me a place." A confused murmur answered him. The men at the edge of the raft, armed with long sticks, pressed with violence against the shore to send off the frail construction with sufficient impetus to force its way through corpses and ice-floes to the other shore. "Thunder of heaven!
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