At nine o'clock, in the morning, the 31st, having a light breeze to the eastward, they cast off, and endeavoured to force through the ice; but, at noon, finding it too close to proceed, again moored to a field. In the afternoon they filled their casks with fresh water from the ice, which they found very pure and soft. The field of ice, to which both vessels were now moored, was found to be eight yards ten inches thick at one end, and seven yards eleven inches at the other. The ice closed fast, and was all round the ships; no opening to be any where seen, except a hole of about a mile and a half, where the ships lay fast to the ice, with ice-anchors. It being calm the greater part of the day, and the weather very fine, the ships companies amused themselves, almost the whole time, in playing on the ice. The pilots, however, finding themselves much farther than they had ever before penetrated, and reflecting on the advanced state of the season, seemed alarmed with apprehensions of being beset. On the 1st of August, the ice pressed in so fast, that there was now not the smallest opening. The two ships were within less than two lengths of each other, neither of them having room to turn. The ice, which had been all flat the day before, and almost level with the water's edge, was now in many places forced higher than the main-yard by the pieces squeezing together. Their latitude this day at noon, by the double altitude, was eighty degrees thirty-seven minutes. On the 2d, it was thick, foggy, wet weather, the wind blowing fresh to the westward; but, though the ice immediately about the ships seemed rather looser than the day before, it hourly set in again so fast, that there appeared no probability of getting the ships out, without a strong east or north-east wind. On the 3d, the weather being very fine, clear, and calm, they perceived that the ships had been driven far to the eastward. The ice, however, was much closer than before; and the passage by which they had come in from the westward quite closed up, with no open water any where in sight. At five in the morning, the pilots having expressed a wish to get, if possible, farther out, the ships companies were set to work, that they might cut away the ice, and warp through the small openings to the westward. They found the ice so very deep, that they were often obliged to saw through pieces twelve feet thick; and, after toiling in this manner the whole day, with all their utmost efforts, had not been able to move the ship above three hundred yards to the westward, through the ice. They had, in the mean time, been driven, with the ice field itself to which they were fast, to the north-east and eastward, by the current; which had also forced the loose ice from the westward between the islands, where it became what the Greenlandmen call packed, or one piece thrown up above another to a considerable height, and as firm as the main body.