d the spirits of my colleague of the "Intrepid," nor
myself. Like the man who lost a scolding wife, we felt if it must be
so, it was for the best, and we were resigned. But it was not to be;
the "Intrepid" with her screw, and the "Pioneer" with gunpowder, which,
for the first time, was now applied, shook the fragments apart in which
we were beset, and again we laid hold of our mentors. A thick fog
immediately enveloped us, and in it we got perfectly puzzled, took a
wrong lead, and, tumbling into a perfect _cul de sac_, made fast, to
await a break in the weather. The 18th of July, from the same cause, a
dense fog, was a lost day, and next day Penny again caught us up. He
reported the whalers to have given up all idea of a Northern fishery
this season. Alas! for the many friends who will be disappointed in not
receiving letters! and alas! for the desponding, who will croak and
sigh at the whalers failing to get across the bay, believing,
therefore, that _we_ shall fail likewise.

Penny had passed a long way inside of the spot the steamers had been
beset and nipped in; and he witnessed a sight which, although
constantly taking place, is seldom seen--the entire dissolution of an
enormous iceberg.

[Headnote: _DISSOLUTION OF AN ICEBERG._]

This iceberg had been observed by our squadron, and remarked for its
huge size and massiveness, giving good promise of resisting a century
of sun and thaw. All on board the "Lady Franklin" described as a most
wonderful spectacle this iceberg, without any warning, falling, as it
were, to pieces; the sea around it resembled a seething caldron, from
the violent plunging of the masses, as they broke and rebroke in a
thousand pieces! The floes, torn up for a distance of ten miles by the
violent action of the rollers, threatened, by the manner the ice was
agitated, to destroy any vessel that had been amongst it; and they
congratulated themselves, on being sufficiently removed from the scene
of danger, to see without incurring any immediate risk.

The fog again lifted for a short time. Penny went in my "crow's nest,"
as well as into the "Resolute's," and soon gave us the disagreeable
intelligence, that the land-floe had broken up, and we were in the
pack, instead of having, as we had fancied, "fast ice" to hold on by;
and, as he remarked, "We can do nothing but push for it;--it's all
broken ice, and push we must, in-shore, or else away we go with the
loose floes!"

With this feeling the six