presented altogether no very pleasing or comfortable spectacle. However, about high water, the ice very opportunely slacking, the _Hecla_ was hove off with great ease, and warped to a floe in the offing to which we made fast at midnight. The _Fury_ was not long after us in coming off the ground, when I was in hopes of finding that any twist or strain, by which her leaks might have been occasioned, would, in some measure, have closed when she was relieved from pressure and once more fairly afloat. My disappointment and mortification, therefore, may in some measure be imagined, at being informed by telegraph, about two A.M. on the 2nd, that the water was gaining on two pumps, and that a part of the doubling had floated up. The _Hecla_ having in the mean time been carried two or three miles to the southward, by the ice which was once more driving in that direction, I directed Captain Hoppner by signal to endeavour to reach the best security in-shore which the present slackness of the ice might permit, until it was possible for the _Hecla_ to rejoin him. Presently after perceiving from the mast-head something like a small harbour nearly abreast of us, every effort was made to get once more towards the shore. In this the ice happily favoured us, and after making sail and one or two tacks we got in with the land, when I left the ship in a boat to sound the place and search for shelter. I soon had the mortification to find that the harbour which had appeared to present itself so opportunely, had not more than six or seven feet water in any part of it, the whole of its defences being composed of the stones and soil washed down by a stream which here emptied itself into the sea. From this place, indeed, where the land gradually became much lower in advancing to the southward, the whole nature of the soundings entirely altered, the water gradually shoaling in approaching the beach, so that the ships could scarcely come nearer, in most parts, than a quarter of a mile. At this distance the whole shore was more or less lined with grounded masses of ice; but after examining the soundings within more than twenty of them, in the space of about a mile, I could only find two that would allow the ships to float at low water, and that by some care in placing and keeping them there. Having fixed a flag on each berg, the usual signal for the ships taking their stations, I rowed on board the _Fury_, and found four pumps constantly going to keep the ship free, and Captain Hoppner, his officers and men, almost exhausted with the incessant labour of the last eight-and-forty hours. The instant the ships were made fast, Captain Hoppner and myself set out in a boat to survey the shore still farther south, there being a narrow lane of water about a mile in that direction; for it had now become too evident, however unwilling we might have been at first to admit the conclusion, that the _Fury_ could proceed no farther without repairs, and that the