h now, for several weeks; the margin of cleat
water increasing by the attrition at each return to the rocks; and it was
known by observation that these changes often occurred at very short
notices. Should the wind haul round with the sun, or one of the
unaccountable currents of those seas intervene before the south-east cape
was reached, the schooner would probably be broken into splinters, or
ground into powder, in the course of some two or three hours. It was
all-important, therefore, to lose not a moment.

Several times in the course of the first hour, the movement of the
schooner was arrested by the want of sufficient room to pass between
projecting points in the cliffs and the edge of the ice. On two of these
occasions passages were cut with the saw, the movement of the field not
answering to the impatience of the sealers. At the end of that most
momentous hour, however, the craft had been hauled ahead a mile and a
half, and had reached a curvature in the coast where the margin of open
water was more than fifty fathoms wide, and the tracking of the vessel
became easy and rapid. By two o'clock the Sea Lion was at what might be
called the bottom of the Great Bay, some three or four leagues from the
cove, and at the place where the long low cape began to run out in a
south-easterly direction. As the wind could now be felt over the rocks,
the foretopsail was set, as well as the lower sails, the latter being
mainly becalmed, however, by the land; when the people were all taken on
board, the craft moving faster under her canvass than by means of the
hauling lines. The wind was very fresh, and in half an hour more the
south-east cape came in sight, close as were the navigators to the rocks.
Ten minutes later, the Sea Lion was under reefed sails, stretching off to
the southward and eastward, in perfectly clear water!

At first, Roswell Gardiner was disposed to rejoice, under the impression
that his greatest labour had been achieved. A better look at the state of
things around him, however, taught the disheartening lesson of humility,
by demonstrating that they had in truth but just commenced.

Although there was scarcely any field-ice to the southward of the group,
and in its immediate neighbourhood, there was a countless number of bergs.
It is true, these floating mountains did not come very near the passage,
for the depth of water just there usually brought them up ere they could
get into it; nevertheless, a large fleet