Cutting through some rotten ice of about six inches in thickness, we reached water beyond it, and saw a belt of water, of no great width, extending along shore as far as the next headland, called Horse's-head. Picking up a boat belonging to the "Chieftain" whaler, which had been shooting and egging, I returned towards the "Resolute" with my intelligence, giving Cape Shackleton a close shave to avoid the ice which was setting against it from the westward, the whalemen whom I had on board expressing no small astonishment and delight at the way in which we screwed through the broken ice of nine-inch thickness. On reaching the squadron, I found it made fast for the night, and parties of officers preparing to start in different directions to shoot, and see what was to be seen, for, of course, our night was as light as the day of any other region. To the "Chieftain's" doctor I, with others of the "Pioneer," consigned what we flattered ourselves were our last letters, thinking that, now the steamers had got ahead, it was not likely the whalers would again be given an opportunity of communicating or overtaking us. There is something in last letters painful and choking; and I remember that I hardly knew which feeling most predominated in my breast,--sorrow and regret for those friends I had left behind me, or hope and joyful anticipation of meeting those before us in the "Erebus and Terror." [Headnote: _CAPE SHACKLETON._] At any rate, I gave vent to them by climbing the rocky summit of Cape Shackleton, and throwing off my jacket, let the cold breeze allay the excitement of my mind. Nothing strikes the traveller in the north more strongly than the perceptible repose of Nature, although the sun is still illumining the heavens, during those hours termed night. We, of course, who were unaccustomed to the constant light, were restless and unable to sleep; but the inhabitants of these regions, as well as the animals, retire to rest with as much regularity as is done in more southern climes; and the subdued tints of the heavens, as well as the heavy banking of clouds in the neighbourhood of the sun, gives to the arctic summer night a quietude as marked as it is pleasant. Across Baffin's Bay there was ice! ice! ice! on every side, small faint streaks of water here and there in the distance, with one cheering strip of it winding snake-like along the coast as far as eye could reach. "To-morrow!" I exclaimed, "we will be there." "Yes!" replied a friend, "but if the breeze freshens, Penny will reach it to-night!" And there, sure enough, were Penny's brigs sailing past our squadron, which showed no sign of vitality beyond that of the officer of the watch visiting the ice-anchors to see all was right. "That fellow, Penny, is no sluggard!" we muttered, "and will yet give the screws a hard tussle to beat him."