An anxious night was spent by all on board, and many ineffectual attempts were made to push our way through cracks in the pack that appeared to be inclined to open. Sleep was out of the question--indeed, was hardly thought of--every one being prepared, with his little bag of necessaries, to abandon the ship when such an order, which seemed inevitable, should be given.
On the following day, by dint of much labour, a space was cleared round the stern of the vessel, which enabled us to ship our rudder, and, the ice having slackened a little, by constantly steaming ahead and astern we succeeded in clearing a larger space in which the ship could be worked, when, boldly attacking the pack, we forced our way through, and with relieved minds and thankful hearts extricated ourselves from our dangerous position, and once more secured the ship in Lincoln Bay. The time occupied in steaming through the pack, a distance of about a mile, was exactly five hours!
The ice was observed to be still tightly packed against Cape Union, and consequently hindered us from pushing on.
We had much reason to be grateful for our safe deliverance from the pack, for, shortly after our extrication, a heavy gale sprang up from the S.W., the effect of which on the ship, beset in such ponderous ice, must have been disastrous in the extreme, and would in all probability have been fatal. Ice navigators, however, are not, as a rule, prone to indulge in ideas as to "what _might_ have occurred had this or that happened:" their thoughts and minds must be directed entirely to the present and the future, only too happy and thankful, as the days go by, to find they still have their own good vessel to sustain them, and carry them through another day. To our engines we owed a deep debt of gratitude, for without the powerful aid of steam we should have been unable, before the gale burst upon us, to have effected our deliverance.
Towards midnight the gale freshened considerably, snow fell, and the weather altogether had a very ugly and threatening appearance. We, however, consoled ourselves with the hope that it would clear the ice out of the channel, and thus enable us to proceed. The noise of the pack grinding and squeezing as it was tossed about by a short turbulent sea was anything but pleasing to listen to, resembling in a measure the sound created by the dashing of the surf over a rock-bound coast. One can easily imagine the feelings of those old navigators, in their frail little barks, which gave rise to the expression that "the irksome noyse of the yce bred strange conceits among us." Very "irksome" indeed was that noise to us, and many were the "strange conceits" that we indulged in as we listened to the soughing of the wind and the crashing of the ice!