“September 23. How shall I describe to you this pressure, its fearfulness and sublimity! Nothing that I have seen or read of approaches it. The voices of the ice and the heavy swash of the overturned hummock-tables are at this moment dinning in my ears. ‘All hands’ are on deck fighting our grim enemy.
“Fourteen inches of solid ice thickness, with some half dozen of snow, are, with the slow uniform advance of a mighty propelling power, driving in upon our vessel. As they strike her, the semi-plastic mass is impressed with a mould of her side, and then, urged on by the force behind, slides upward, and rises in great vertical tables. When these attain their utmost height, still pressed on by others, they topple over, and form a great embankment of fallen tables. At the same time, others take a downward direction, and when pushed on, as in the other case, form a similar pile underneath. The side on which one or the other of these actions takes place for the time, varies with the direction of the force, the strength of the opposite or resisting side, the inclination of the vessel, and the weight of the superincumbent mounds; and as these conditions follow each other in varying succession, the vessel becomes perfectly imbedded after a little while in crumbling and fractured ice.
“Perhaps no vessel has ever been in this position but our own. With matured ice, nothing of iron or wood could resist such pressure. As for the British vessels, their size would make it next to impossible for them to stand. Back’s ‘Winter’ is the only thing I have read of that reminds me of our present predicament. No vessel has ever been caught by winter in these waters.
“We are lifted bodily eighteen inches out of water. The hummocks are reared up around the ship, so as to rise in some cases a couple of feet above our bulwarks—five feet above our deck. They are very often ten and twelve feet high. All hands are out, laboring with picks and crowbars to overturn the fragments that threaten to overwhelm us. Add to this darkness, snow, cold, and the absolute destitution of surrounding shores.
“This uprearing of the ice is not a slow work: it is progressive, but not slow. It was only at 4 P.M. that nips began, and now the entire plain is triangulated with ice-barricades. Under the double influence of sails and warping-hawsers, we have not been able to budge a hair’s-breadth. Yet, impelled by this irresistible, bearing-down floe-monster, we crush, grind, eat our way, surrounded by the ruins of our progress. In fourteen minutes we changed our position 80 feet, or 5.71 per minute.
“Sometimes the ice cracks with violence, almost explosive, throughout the entire length of the floe. Very grand this! Sometimes the hummock masses, piled up like crushed sugar around the ship, suddenly sink into the sea, and then fresh mounds take their place.
“Our little neighbor, the Rescue, is all this time within twenty yards of us, resting upon wedges of ice, and not subjected to movement or pressure—a fact of interest, as it shows how very small a difference of position may determine the differing fate of two vessels.
“September 24. The ice is kinder; no fresh movements; a little whining in the morning, but since then undisturbed. The ice, however, is influenced by the wind; for open water-pools have formed—three around the ship within eye distance. In one of these, the seals made their appearance toward noon; no less than five disporting together among the sludge of the open water. I started off on a perilous walk over the ruined barricades of last night’s commotion; and, after cooling myself for forty minutes in an atmosphere ten degrees above zero, came back without a shot. The condensed moisture had so affected my powder that I could not get my gun off.
“This condensation is now very troublesome, dripping down from our carlines, and sweating over the roof and berth-boards. When we open the hatchway, the steam rises in clouds from the little cabin below.
“We have as yet no fires; worse! the state of uncertainty in which we are placed makes it impossible to resort to any winter arrangements. Yet these lard lamps give us a temperature of 46°, which to men like ourselves, used to constant out-door exercise, exposure, and absence of artificial heat, is quite genial. But for the moisture—that wretched, comfortless, rheumatic drawback—we would be quite snug.