provisions, and to land a quantity of heavy ironwork and other stores not perishable; for the moment this measure was determined on I was anxious, almost at any risk, to commence the lightening of the ship as far as our present insecurity and our distance from the shore would permit. The wind blowing fresh from the northward, which always increased our difficulties on this coast, the ice pressed so violently upon the ships as almost to force them adrift during the night, employing our people, now sufficiently harassed by their work during the day, for two or three hours in still further increasing our security by additional hawsers. We continued landing stores from the _Fury_ on the 4th, and at night a bower cable was passed round one of the grounded masses alongside of her; for if either ship had once got adrift, it is difficult to say what might have been the consequence. At two A.M. on the 5th, the ice began to slacken near the ships, and as soon as a boat could be rowed along shore to the southward, I set out, accompanied by a second from the _Fury_, for the purpose of examining the state of our intended harbour since the recent pressure, and to endeavour to prepare for the reception of the ships by clearing out the loose ice. On my arrival there, the distance being about a mile, I found that one of the three bergs had shifted its place so materially by the late movements of the ice, as not only to alter the disposition of these masses, on which our whole dependence rested, very much for the worse, but also to destroy all confidence in their stability upon the ground. Landing upon one of the bergs to show the appointed signal for the ships to come, I perceived, about half a mile beyond us to the southward, a low point forming a little bay, with a great deal of heavy grounded ice lying off it. I immediately rowed to this, in hopes of finding something like a harbour for our purpose, but on my arrival there, had once more the mortification to find that there were not above six feet of water at low tide in any part of it, and within the grounded ice not more than twelve. Having assured myself that no security or shelter was here to be found, I immediately returned to the former place, which the _Hecla_ was just reaching. The _Fury_ was detained some time by a quantity of loose ice which had wedged itself in, in such a manner as to leave her no room to move outwards; but she arrived about seven o’clock, when both ships were made fast in the best berths we could find, but they were still excluded from their intended place by the quantity of ice which had fixed itself there. Within twenty minutes after our arrival, the whole body of ice again came in, entirely closing up the shore, so that our moving proved most opportune. CHAPTER VI.