From this trial of the efficacy of our means of security, it was plain that the _Fury_ could not possibly be hove down under circumstances of such frequent and imminent risk; I therefore directed a fourth anchor, with two additional cables, to be carried out, with the hope of breaking some of the force of the ice by its offering a more oblique resistance than the other, and thus by degrees turning the direction of the pressure from the ships. We had scarcely completed this new defence, when the largest floe we had seen since leaving Port Bowen came sweeping along the shore, having a motion to the southward of not less than a mile and a half an hour; and a projecting point of it just grazing our outer berg, threatened to overturn it, and would certainly have dislodged it from its situation but for the cable recently attached to it. A second similar occurrence took place with a smaller mass of ice about midnight, and near the top of an unusually high spring tide, which seemed ready to float away every security from us. For three hours about the time of this high water, our situation was a most critical one, for had the bergs, or indeed any one of them, been carried away or broken, both ships must inevitably have been driven on shore by the very next mass of ice that should come in. Happily, however, they did not suffer any further material disturbance, and the main body keeping at a short distance from the land until the tide had fallen, the bergs seemed to be once more firmly resting on the ground. The only mischief, therefore, occasioned by this disturbance was the slackening of our cables by the alteration in the positions of the several grounded masses, and the consequent necessity of employing more time, which nothing but absolute necessity could induce us to bestow in adjusting and tightening the whole of them afresh. The wind veering to the W.N.W. on the morning of the 15th, and still continuing to blow strong, the ice was forced three or four miles off the land in the course of a few hours, leaving us a quiet day for continuing our work, but exciting no very pleasing sensations when we considered what progress we might have been making had we been at liberty to pursue our object. The land was, indeed, so clear of ice to the southward that Dr. Neill, who walked a considerable distance in that direction, could see nothing but an open channel in-shore to the utmost extent of his view. We took advantage of this open water to send the launch for the _Fury’s_ ironwork left at the former station; for though the few men thus employed could very ill be spared, we were obliged to arrange everything with reference to the ultimate saving of time; and it would have occupied both ships’ companies more than a whole day to carry the things round by land.