r
chains at every instant; it was feared that the iceberg to which they
were anchored, torn away at its base under the violent west wind,
would float away with the brig. The officers were constantly on the
look-out and under extreme apprehension; along with the snow there
fell a perfect hail of ice torn off from the surface of the icebergs
by the strength of the wind; it was like a shower of arrows bristling
in the atmosphere. The temperature rose singularly during this
terrible night; the thermometer marked fifty-seven degrees, and the
doctor, to his great astonishment, thought he saw flashes of lightning
in the south, followed by the roar of far-off thunder that seemed
to corroborate the testimony of the whaler Scoresby, who observed
a similar phenomenon above the sixty-fifth parallel. Captain Parry
was also witness to a similar meteorological wonder in 1821.

Towards five o'clock in the morning the weather changed with
astonishing rapidity; the temperature went down to freezing point,
the wind turned north, and became calmer. The western opening to the
strait was in sight, but entirely obstructed. Hatteras looked eagerly
at the coast, asking himself if the passage really existed. However,
the brig got under way, and glided slowly amongst the ice-streams,
whilst the icebergs pressed noisily against her planks, the packs
at that epoch were still from six to seven feet thick; they were
obliged carefully to avoid their pressure, for if the brig had
resisted them she would have run the risk of being lifted up and turned
over on her side. At noon, for the first time, they could admire a
magnificent solar phenomenon, a halo with two parhelia; the doctor
observed it, and took its exact dimensions; the exterior bow was only
visible over an extent of thirty degrees on each side of its horizontal
diameter; the two images of the sun were remarkably clear; the colours
of the luminous bows proceeded from inside to outside, and were red,
yellow, green, and very light blue--in short, white light without
any assignable exterior limit. The doctor remembered the ingenious
theory of Thomas Young about these meteors; this natural philosopher
supposed that certain clouds composed of prisms of ice are suspended
in the atmosphere; the rays of the sun that fall on the prisms are
decomposed at angles of sixty and ninety degrees. Halos cannot,
therefore, exist in a calm atmosphere. The doctor thought this theory
very probable. Sailors accusto