“June 5, Thursday. We notice again this morning the movement in the trench alongside. The floating scum of rubbish advances and recedes with a regularity that can only be due to some equable undulation from without to the north. We continue perched up, just as we were after our great lift of last December. A more careful measurement than we had made before, gave us yesterday, between our height aft and depression forward, a difference of level of 6 feet 4 inches. This inclination tells in a length of 83 feet—about one in thirteen.
“P.M. The break-up at last! a little after five this afternoon, Mr. Griffin left us for the Rescue, after making a short visit. He had hardly gone before I heard a hail and its answer, both of them in a tone of more excitement than we had been used to for some time past; and the next moment, the cry, ‘Ice cracking ahead!’
“Murdaugh and myself reached the deck just in time to see De Haven crossing our gangway. We followed. Imagine our feelings when, midway between the two vessels, we saw Griffin with the ice separating before him, and at the same instant found a crack tracing its way between us, and the water spinning up to the surface. ‘Stick by the floe. Good-by! What news for home?’ said he. One jump across the chasm, a hearty God-bless-you shake of the hand, a long jump back, and a little river divided our party.
“Griffin made his way along one fissure and over another. We followed a lead that was open to our starboard beam, each man for himself. In half a minute or less came the outcry, ‘She’s breaking out: all hands aboard!’ and within ten minutes from Griffin’s first hail, while we were yet scrambling into our little Ark of Refuge, the whole area about us was divided by irregular chasms in every direction.
BIRD’S-EYE view of floe, JUNE 5.
A. Advance. D. Floe adhering to the Advance. R. Rescue. C. Path between brigs before break-up. H H. Hummocks.
“All this was at half past five. At six I took a bird’s-eye sketch from aloft. Many of the fissures were already some twenty paces across. Conflicting forces were at work every where; one round-house moving here, another in an opposite direction, the two vessels parting company. Since the night of our Lancaster Sound commotion, months ago, the Rescue had not changed her bearing: she was already on our port-beam. Every thing was changed.
“Our brig, however, had not yet found an even keel. The enormous masses of ice, thrust under her stern by the action of repeated pressures, had glued themselves together so completely, that we remained cradled in a mass of ice exceeding twenty-five feet in solid depth. Many of these tables were liberated by the swell, and rose majestically from their recesses, striking the ship, and then escaping above the surface for a moment, with a sudden vault.
“To add to the novelty of our situation, two cracks coming together obliquely, met a few yards astern of us, cleaving through the heavy ice, and leaving us attached to a triangular fragment of 14 by 22 paces. This berg-like fragment, reduced as it was, continued its close adhesion. Its buoyancy was so great, that it acted like a camel, retaining the brig’s stern high in the air, her bows thrown down toward the water. We are so at this moment, 10 P.M."