The space in which we could manœuvre the schooner became gradually more and more contracted; the collisions with the ice became more frequent. We were losing ground. The ice was closing in with the land, and we were finally brought to bay. There was no longer a lead. And it was now too late to retreat, had we been even so inclined. The ice was as closely unpacked behind us as before us. With marvelous celerity the scene had shifted. An hour later, and there was scarcely a patch of open water in sight from the deck, and the floes were closing upon the schooner like a vice. Utterly powerless within its jaws, we had no alternative but to await the issue with what calmness we could. The scene around us was as imposing as it was alarming. Except the earthquake and volcano, there is not in nature an exhibition of force comparable with that of the ice-fields of the Arctic Seas. They close together, when driven by the wind or by currents against the land or other resisting object, with the pressure of millions of moving tons, and the crash and noise and confusion are truly terrific. We were now in the midst of one of the most thrilling of these exhibitions of Polar dynamics, and we became uncomfortably conscious that the schooner was to become a sort of dynamometer. Vast ridges were thrown up wherever the floes came together, to be submerged again when the pressure was exerted in another quarter; and over the sea around us these pulsating lines of uplift, which in some cases reached an altitude of not less than sixty feet,--higher than our mast-head,--told of the strength and power of the enemy which was threatening us. We had worked ourselves into a triangular space formed by the contact of three fields. At first there was plenty of room to turn round, though no chance to escape. We were nicely docked, and vainly hoped that we were safe; but the corners of the protecting floes were slowly crushed off, the space narrowed little by little, and we listened to the crackling and crunching of the ice, and watched its progress with consternation. [Sidenote: FORCE OF THE ICE-FIELDS.] At length the ice touched the schooner, and it appeared as if her destiny was sealed. She groaned like a conscious thing in pain, and writhed and twisted as if to escape her adversary, trembling in every timber from truck to kelson. Her sides seemed to be giving way. Her deck timbers were bowed up, and the seams of the deck planks were opened. I gave up for lost the little craft which had gallantly carried us through so many scenes of peril; but her sides were solid and her ribs strong; and the ice on the port side, working gradually under the bilge, at length, with a jerk which sent us all reeling, lifted her out of the water; and the floes, still pressing on and breaking, as they were crowded together, a vast ridge was piling up beneath and around us; and, as if with the elevating power of a thousand jack-screws, we found ourselves going slowly up into the air.