At six P.M., however, land was
reported to be seen ahead. The vexation and anxiety produced on
every countenance by such a report were but too visible, until, on
a nearer approach, it was found to be only an island, of no very
large extent, and that, on each side of it, the horizon still
appeared clear for several points of the compass. At eight P.M. we
came to some ice of no great breadth or thickness, extending
several miles in a direction nearly parallel to our course; and as
we could see clear water over it to the southward, I was for some
time in the hope that it would prove a detached stream, from which
no obstruction to our progress westerly was to be apprehended. At
twenty minutes past ten, however, the weather having become hazy
and the wind light, we perceived that the ice, along which we had
been sailing for the last two hours, was joined, at the distance
of half a mile to the westward of us, to a compact and impenetrable
body of floes, which lay across the whole breadth of the strait,
formed by the island and the western point of Maxwell Bay. We
hauled our wind to the northward, just in time to avoid being
embayed in the ice, on the outer edge of which a considerable surf,
the effect of the late gale, was then rolling.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49