“I tried to measure the depth of this inveterate companion of ours. Standing at our port gangway, I lowered the pump-rod twenty-four feet to a shelf projecting from the mass: beneath this, a prolongation or tongue stretched to a depth which I could not determine. On the other side, to starboard, the ice descends in solid mass some twenty feet. Adopting twenty-four feet as a mean depth, and ninety by fifty feet as the mean of dimensions at the surface, the solid contents of this troublesome winter relic would be 108,000 cubic feet. No wonder it lifts up our little craft bodily. I have made my drawings of it with all topographical accuracy.
“The wind has been hauling round from the south to the west, and by afternoon blew quite freshly. We made all sail, even to studding-sails, in hopes of forcing the cracks ahead, and tearing ourselves, as it were, from our impediment. Thus far all has failed.
“10 P.M. The ship is covered with canvas: she stands motionless amid the ice, although her wings are spread and tense. The wind is fresh and steady from the northwest. Our swell ceases with this wind, and the floes seem disposed to come together again; but the days of winter have passed by, and the interposing calves prevent the apposition of the edges.
“The effects of a constant force, slight as it seems, have been beautifully shown by our brig. Pressing as we do, under full canvas, against heavy yet quiescent masses, we gradually force ahead, breasting aside the floes, and leaving behind us a pool of open water. Our rate is ten feet per hour! Remember that the old man of Sinbad still clings to us, and that we carry the burden in this slow progress. I hope that the Sinbad comparison will end here; for I can readily, without much imagination, carry it further.
“12 Midnight. Still advancing, dragging behind us this pertinacious mass. We have butted several times against projecting floes, but it is as unmoved as solid rock. Very foggy: Rescue not visible. Thermometer at 29 degrees.
“We recognize, among the floe fragments around us, old play-fellows. Here we played foot-ball; there we skated; by this hummock crag stood my thermometers; and here I shot a bear. We are passing slowly from them, or they from us. Now and then a rubbish pile will show itself, cresting the pure ice. Even an old champagne basket, full of nothing but sadly-pleasant associations, is recognized upon a distant floe. This breaking up of a curtilage is not without its regrets. I wish that our ‘old man’ would loosen his gripping knees: three hours would put us into comparatively open water.
“June 7, Saturday. The captain says that the shocks of the night of the fifth were the hardest our brig has experienced yet.
“This morning we made our incubus fast to one end of a passing floe, and ourselves fast to the other: double hawsers were used, blocks and tackle rigged, and all hands placed at our patent winch, the slack being controlled by a windlass. We parted our stern hawser, and that was all. Our resort now is to the fourteen-feet saw. With this, before the day closes, we shall cut a skerf as far as our fore-foot, and then try the efficacy of wedges.
“Toward evening the Rescue made sail, and forced her way slowly through the fragments. By eight P.M. she was snugly secured to the other side of our own floe. A beautiful sight it was to see once more, even in this labyrinth of rubbish, a moving sail-spread vessel. Once a momentary opening showed us the dark water, and beneath it the shadow of the brig.