Whilst this digression upon icebergs has taken place, the kind reader will suppose the calm to have ceased, and the "Resolute" and "Pioneer," under sail before a westerly wind, to be running from the table-land on the north shore of Lancaster Sound, in a diagonal direction towards Leopold Island. On the 26th of August, Cape York gleamed through an angry sky, and as Regent's Inlet opened to the southward, there was little doubt but we should soon be caught in an Arctic gale: we, however, cared little, provided there was plenty of water ahead, though of that there appeared strong reasons for entertaining doubts, as both the temperature of the air and water was fast falling. That night--for night was now of some two hours' duration--the wind piped merrily, and we rolled most cruelly; the long and narrow "Pioneer" threatening to pitch every spar over the side, and refusing all the manoeuvring upon the part of her beshaken officers and men to comfort and quiet her. A poet, who had not been fourteen hours in the cold, and whose body was not racked by constant gymnastic exertion to preserve his bones from fracture, might have given a beautiful description of the lifting of a fierce sky at about half-past one in the morning, and a disagreeable glimpse through snow-storm and squall of a bold and precipitous coast not many miles off, and ahead of us. I cannot undertake to do so, for I remember feeling far from poetical, as, with a jerk and a roll, the "Pioneer," under fore and aft canvas, came to the wind. Fast increasing daylight showed us to have been thrown considerably to the northward; and as we sailed to the south the ice showed itself in far from pleasing proximity under the lee--_boiling_, for so the edge of a pack appears to do in a gale of wind. It was a wild sight; but we felt that, at any rate, it was optional with a screw steamer whether she ran into the pack or kept the sea, for her clawing-to-windward power astonished us who had fought in the teeth of hard gales elsewhere in flying Symondite brigs. Not so, however, thought a tough old Hull quarter-master whose weather-beaten face peered anxiously over the lee, and watched the "Resolute" beating Cromer-a-lee, for I heard him growl out, "Wull, if they are off a strait lee-pack edge, the sooner they make up their minds to run into it the better!" "Why so, Hall?" I inquired. "Because, sir," replied the old man, "that ship is going two feet to leeward for one she is going ahead, and she would _never_ work off _nothing!_" "Pleasant!" I mentally ejaculated; but, willing to hear more from my dry old friend, who was quite a character in his way,--"Perhaps," I said, "you have occasionally been caught in worse vessels off such a pack as you describe, or a lee shore, and still not been lost?"