as sustained by either
vessel. As the schooners got once more near to the field-ice, Roswell went
on board his own craft; and all the boats, which had been towing in the
open passage, were run up and secured. Gardiner now led, leaving his
consort to follow as closely in his wake as she could keep.

Much greater difficulty, and dangers indeed, were encountered among the
broken and grating floes, than had been expected, or previously met with.
Notwithstanding fenders were got out on all sides, many a rude shock was
sustained, and the copper suffered in several places. Once or twice,
Roswell apprehended that the schooners would be crushed by the pressure on
their sides. The hazards were in some measure increased by the bold manner
in which our navigators felt themselves called on to push ahead; for time
was very precious in every sense, not only on account of the waning
season, but actually on account of the fatigue undergone by men who were
compelled to toil at the pumps one minute in every four.

At the return of day, now getting to be later than it had been during the
early months of their visit to these seas, our adventurers found
themselves in the centre of vast fields of floating ice, driving away from
the bergs, which, influenced by under-currents, were still floating north,
while the floes drove to the southward. It was very desirable to get clear
of all this cake-ice, though the grinding among it was by no means as
formidable, as when the seas were running high, and the whole of the
frozen expanse was in violent commotion. Motion, however, soon became
nearly impossible, except as the schooners drifted in the midst of the
mass, which was floating south at the rate of about two knots.

Thus passed an entire day and night. So compact was the ice around them,
that the mariners passed from one vessel to the other on it, with the
utmost confidence. No apprehension was felt so long as the wind stood in
its present quarter, the fleet of bergs actually forming as good a lee as
if they had been so much land. On the morning of the second day, all this
suddenly changed. The ice began to open; why, was matter of conjecture,
though it was attributed to a variance between the wind and the currents.
This, in some measure, liberated the schooners, and they began to move
independently of the floes. About noon, the smoke of the volcano became
once more visible; and before the sun went down the cap of the highest
elevation in the gr