I climbed the rocks a second time with Mr. McGary, and took a careful
survey of the ice with my glass. The "fast," as the whalers call the
immovable shore-ice, could be seen in a nearly unbroken sweep, passing
by Bushnell's Island, and joining the coast not far from where I stood.
The outside floes were large, and had evidently been not long broken;
but it cheered my heart to see that there was one well defined lead
which followed the main floe until it lost itself to seaward.

I called my officers together, explained to them the motives which
governed me, and prepared to re-embark. The boats were hauled up,
examined carefully, and, as far as our means permitted, repaired. The
"Red Eric" was stripped of her outfit and cargo, to be broken up for
fuel when the occasion should come. A large beacon-cairn was built on an
eminence, open to view from the south and west, and a red flannel shirt,
spared with some reluctance, was hoisted as a pennant to draw attention
to the spot. Here I deposited a succinct record of our condition and
purposes, and then directed our course south by west into the
ice-fields.

By degrees the ice through which we were moving became more and more
impacted, and it sometimes required all our ice-knowledge to determine
whether a particular lead was practicable or not. The irregularities of
the surface, broken by hummocks, and occasionally by larger masses, made
it difficult to see far ahead, besides which we were often embarrassed
by the fogs. I was awakened one evening from a weary sleep in my
fox-skins to discover that we had fairly lost our way. The officer at
the helm of the leading boat, misled by the irregular shape of a large
iceberg that crossed his track, had lost the main lead some time before,
and was steering shoreward, far out of the true course. The little canal
in which he had locked us was hardly two boats'-lengths across, and lost
itself not far off in a feeble zigzag both behind and before us; it was
evidently closing, and we could not retreat.

Without apprising the men of our misadventure, I ordered the boats
hauled up, and, under pretence of drying the clothing and stores, made
a camp on the ice. A few hours after the weather cleared enough for the
first time to allow a view of the distance, and McGary and myself
climbed a berg some three hundred feet high for the purpose. It was
truly fearful; we were deep in the recesses of the bay, surrounded on
all sides by stupendous iceber