We have once more been driven out of the Sound. The gale set in again with great violence, and in the act of wearing the schooner, to avoid an iceberg, the fore-gaff parted in the middle; and, unable to carry any thing but a close-reefed staysail, we were forced again to seek shelter behind our old protector, Cape Alexander. McCormick is patching up the wreck and preparing for another struggle.
ENTERING THE PACK
The next two days were filled with dangerous adventure. The broken spar being repaired, we had another fight for the Sound, and got again inside. The pack still lay where it was before, and again headed us off. There was a good deal of open water between Littleton Island and Cape Hatherton, and apparently to the northwest of that cape; but there was much heavy ice off the island, with tortuous leads separating the floes. I determined, however, to enter the pack and try to reach the open water above. Taking the first fair opening, we made a northwest course for about ten miles, when, finding that we were unable to penetrate any further in that direction, we tacked ship, hoping to reach the clear water that lay above the island.
We were now fairly in the fight. The current was found to be setting strongly against us, and it was soon discovered that the ice was coming rapidly down the Sound, and that the leads were already slowly closing up. We worked vigorously, crowding on all the sail we could; but we did not make our point, and soon had to go about again; or rather, we tried to; for the schooner, never reliable without her topsail, which we could not carry owing to the accident to the topmast, missed in stays; and, fearful of being nipped between the fields which were rapidly reducing the open water about us, we wore round; and, there not being sufficient room, we were on the eve of striking with the starboard-bow a solid ice-field a mile in width. There was little hope for the schooner if this collision should happen with our full headway; and being unable to avoid it, I thought it clearly safest to take the shock squarely on the fore-foot; so I ordered the helm up, and went at it in true battering-ram style. To me the prospect was doubly disagreeable. For the greater facility of observation I had taken my station on the foretop-yard; and the mast being already sprung and swinging with my weight, I had little other expectation than that, when the shock came, it would snap off and land me with the wreck on the ice ahead. Luckily for me the spar held firm, but the cut-water flew in splinters with the collision, and the iron sheathing was torn from the bows as if it had been brown paper.
IN THE PACK.
And now came a series of desperate struggles. No topsail-schooner was ever put through such a set of gymnastic feats. I had been so much annoyed by the detentions and embarrassments of the last few days that I was determined to risk every thing rather than go back. As long as the schooner would float I should hope still to get a clutch on Cape Hatherton.
Getting clear of the floe, the schooner came again to the wind, and, gliding into a narrow lead, we soon emerged into a broad space of open water. Had this continued we should soon have been rewarded with success, but in half an hour the navigation became so tortuous that we were compelled again to go about and stand in-shore. And thus we continued for many hours, tacking to and fro,—sometimes gaining a little, then losing ground by being forced to go to leeward of a floe, which we could not weather.
BESET.
The space in which we could manœuvre the schooner became gradually more and more contracted; the collisions with the ice became more frequent. We were losing ground. The ice was closing in with the land, and we were finally brought to bay. There was no longer a lead. And it was now too late to retreat, had we been even so inclined. The ice was as closely unpacked behind us as before us. With marvelous celerity the scene had shifted. An hour later, and there was scarcely a patch of open water in sight from the deck, and the floes were closing upon the schooner like a vice. Utterly powerless within its jaws, we had no alternative but to await the issue with what calmness we could.