ing out his own route; and by extending our line, and holding on
to it, we at last got near enough to take him off the piece of detached
ice on which he had providentially scrambled. I never think of the
occurrence without a sickening sensation, mixed with a comic
recollection of K----'s ejaculations. Whilst walking back with my
half-frozen friend, the ice showed itself to be easing off rapidly with
the turn of tide. At 1 A.M. we were all free, and a lane of water
extending itself ahead.

[Headnote: _MELVILLE BAY._]

_July 4th._--At 1 P.M. we started again, towing the ships, the whaling
fleet from the southward under every stitch of canvas threatening to
reach the Duck Islands before ourselves, and Captain Penny's squadron
out of sight to the north-west. By dint of hard steaming we contrived
to reach the islands before the whalers, and at midnight got orders to
cast off and cruise about under sail, all the vessels rejoining us that
we had passed some days ago off the Women's Isles.

The much talked of, by whalemen, "Devil's Thumb," was now open; it
appears to be a huge mass of granite or basalt, which rears itself on a
cliff of some 600 or 800 feet elevation, and is known as the southern
boundary of Melville Bay, round whose dreary circuit, year after year,
the fishermen work their way to reach the large body of water about the
entrance of Lancaster Sound and Pond's Bay. Facing to the south-west,
from whence the worst gales of wind at this season of the year arise,
it is not to be wondered at that Melville Bay has been the grave of
many a goodly craft, and in one disastrous year the whaling fleet was
diminished by no less than twenty-eight sail (without the loss of life,
however), a blow from which it never has recovered. No good reason was
adduced for taking this route, beyond the argument, founded upon
experience, that the earliest passages were always to be made by
Melville Bay; this I perfectly understood, for early in the season,
when northerly winds do prevail, the coast of Melville Bay is a
weather-shore, and the ice, acted upon by wind and current, would
detach itself and form between the land-ice and the pack-ice a safe
high-road to the westward. It was far otherwise in 1850. The prospect
of an early passage, viz., from the first to the third week of June,
had long vanished. Southerly winds, after so long a prevalence of
northerly ones (vide Captain Gravill's information), were to be
expected. The whole we