After fruitless attempts to force their way through the fields of ice, the limits of these became at length so contracted, that the ships were immovably fixed. The smooth extent of surface was soon lost; the pressure of the pieces of ice, by the violence of the swell, caused them to pack; and fragment rose upon fragment, until they were in many places higher than the main-yard. The movements of the ships were tremendous and involuntary, in conjunction with the surrounding ice, actuated by the currents. The water having shoaled to fourteen fathoms, great apprehensions were entertained, as the grounding of the ice, or of the ships, would have been equally fatal: the force of the ice might have crushed them to atoms, or have lifted them out of the water, and have overset them; or, again, have left them suspended on the summits of the pieces of ice, at a tremendous hight, exposed to the fury of the winds, or to the risk of being dashed to pieces by the failure of their frozen dock. An attempt was made to cut a passage through the ice; but after a perseverance truly worthy of Britons, it proved ineffectual. The commander, who was at all times master of himself, directed the boats to be made ready to be hauled over the ice, till they should reach navigable water, proposing in them to make the voyage to England; but after they had thus been drawn over the ice, for three progressive days, a wind having sprung up, the ice separated sufficiently to yield to the pressure of the ships in full sail. After having labored against the resisting fields of ice, they at length reached the harbor of Smeerinberg, at the west end of Spitzbergen.