"The protected space," says Nares, "available for shelter was so contracted and shallow, the entrance to it so small, and the united force of the wind and flood-tide so powerful, that it was with much labour and no trifling expense in broken hawsers that the ship was hauled in stem foremost. It was a close race whether the ice or the ship would be in first, and my anxiety was much relieved when I saw the ship's bow swing clear into safety just as the advancing edge of the heavy pack closed in against the outside of our friendly barrier of ice. From our position of comparative security the danger we had so narrowly escaped was strikingly apparent as we gazed with wonder and awe at the power exerted by the ice driven past us to the eastward with irresistible force by the wind and flood-tide at the rate of about a mile an hour. The projecting points of each passing floe which grounded near the shore in about ten fathoms of water would be at once wrenched off from its still moving parent mass; the pressure continuing, the several pieces, frequently thirty thousand tons in weight, would be forced up the inclined shore, rising slowly and majestically ten or twelve feet above their old line of flotation. Such pieces quickly accumulated until a rampart-like barrier of solid ice-blocks, measuring about two hundred yards in breadth and rising fifty feet high, lined the shore, locking us in, but effectually protecting us from the overwhelming power of the pack." The land had already assumed a wintry aspect, and the ship soon put on a garb of snow and ice, each spar and rope being double its ordinary thickness from the accumulation of rime. Around her everything was white and solemn; no voice of bird or beast was heard; all was still and silent save the gathering floes; and in two days the men were able to walk on shore over the new ice. For eleven months she stayed here, secured by cables to anchors frozen on to the shore to protect her from gales on the landward side. With the ship housed in awnings of tilt-cloth, with snow a foot thick laid on the upper deck and banked up on each side as high as the main-chains, with skylights and hatchways carefully covered up, except two hatchways for ingress and egress constructed with porches and double doors so as to prevent the entrance of the bitter air, the crew here passed the long Polar night. On the 11th of October the sun disappeared, and then began those entertainments, lectures, lessons, games, not forgetting the Royal Arctic Theatre which opened on the 18th of November, with which the winter was pleasantly whiled away. "Can you sing or dance? or what can you do for the amusement of others?" every man had been asked before he was chosen, and the result was a singularly happy time kept up until sunrise.