pressure, though for several hours after the same creaking and grinding sounds continued to annoy our ears. The barometer and the other instruments fell with a regularity unprecedented, yet the gale was broken, and by midnight it had abated considerably. “Sept. 21st. There was a lateral motion in some pieces of the surrounding ice, and, after several astounding thumps under water against the bottom, the ship, which had been lifted high beyond the line of flotation, and thrown somewhat over to port, suddenly started up and almost righted. Still, however, she inclined more than was agreeable to port, nor was it until one mass of ponderous dimensions burst from its imprisonment below that she altogether regained her upright position. On beholding the walls of ice on either side between which she had been nipped, I was astonished at the tremendous force she had sustained.” Her mould was stamped as perfectly as in a die. Astonishment, however, soon yielded to a more grateful feeling, an admiration of the genius and mechanical skill by which the _Terror_ had been so ably prepared for this service. There were many old Greenland seamen on board, and they were unanimously of opinion that no ship they had ever seen could have resisted such a pressure. On sounding the well she was found not to leak, though the carpenters had employment enough in caulking the seams on deck. They had now been a month beset, and were about to attempt the cutting of a dock in the ice round the ship, when there was a general commotion, and the entire body by which they were hampered separated into single pieces, tossing into heaps, and grinding to powder whatever interrupted its course. The ship bore well up against this hurly-burly, but the situation was not improved. For several days the _Terror_ was in a helpless condition, her stern raised seven and a half feet above its proper position, and her bows correspondingly depressed, by the pressure of huge ice-masses. Her deck was in consequence a slippery and dangerous inclined plane.