snow, it required a practised
eye to detect them. Not so the voracious and impertinent mollies--the
Procellaria of naturalists. Their very ugliness appeared to give them
security, and they are, in the North, what the vulture and carrion crow
are in more pleasant climes--Nature's scavengers.

The 14th and 15th of July found us still firmly beset, and sorely was
our patience taxed. In-shore of us, a firm unbroken sheet of ice
extended to the land, some fifteen miles distant. Across it, in various
directions, like hedge-rows in an English landscape, ran long lines of
piled-up hummocks, formed during the winter by some great pressure; and
on the surface, pools of water and sludge[1] broke the general monotony
of the aspect.

[1] Is the term applied to half-thawed ice or snow.

[Headnote: _ANXIETY AND HOPE._]

The striking mass of rock, known as Melville's Monument, was clear of
snow, because it was too steep for ice to adhere; but every where else
huge domes of white showed where Greenland lay, except where Cape
Walker thrust its black cliff through the glacier to scowl upon us.

Tantalus never longed for water more than we did. Those who have been
so beset can alone tell of the watchfulness and headaching for water.
Now to the mast-head with straining eyes,--then arguing and inferring,
from the direction of wind and tide, that water must come. Others
strolling over to a hole, and with fragments of wood, or a measure,
endeavouring to detect that movement in the floes by which liberation
was to be brought about. Some sage in uniform, perhaps, tries to prove,
by the experience of former voyages, that the lucky day is passed or
close at hand; whilst wiser ones console themselves with exclaiming,
"That, at any rate, we are, as yet, before Sir James Ross's
expedition,--both in time and position."

The 16th of July showed more favourable symptoms, and Captain Penny was
seen working for a lane of water, a long way in-shore of us. In the
night, a general disruption of the fixed ice was taking place in the
most marvellous manner; and, by the next morning, there was nearly as
much water as there had before been ice. The two steamers, firmly
imbedded in a mass of ice, many miles in circumference, were drifting
rapidly to the southward, whilst the two ships, afloat in a large space
of water and fastened to the floe, awaited our liberation.

The prospect of a separation from the ships, when unavoidable, in no
wise depresse