At four A.M. on the 4th we came to a quantity of loose ice, which lay straggling among the bergs; and as there was a light breeze from the southward, and I was anxious to avoid, if possible, the necessity of going to the eastward, I pushed the Hecla into the ice, in the hope of being able to make our way through it. We had scarcely done so, however, before it fell calm; when the ship became perfectly unmanageable, and was for some time at the mercy of the swell, which drifted us fast towards the bergs. All the boats were immediately sent ahead to tow; and the Griper's signal was made not to enter the ice. After two hours' hard pulling, we succeeded in getting the Hecla back again into clear water, and to a sufficient distance from the icebergs, which it is very dangerous to approach when there is a swell. At noon we were in lat. 69° 50' 47", long. 57° 07' 56", being near the middle of the narrowest part of Davis's Strait, which is here not more than fifty leagues across. On the 5th it was necessary to pass through some heavy streams of ice, in order to avoid the loss of time by going round to the eastward. On this, as on many other occasions, the advantage possessed by a ship of considerable weight in the water, in separating the heavy masses of ice, was Very apparent. In some of the streams through which the Hecla passed, a vessel of a hundred tons less burden must have been immovably beset. The Griper was on this and many other occasions only enabled to follow the Hecla by taking advantage of the openings made by the latter. A herd of seahorses being seen lying on a piece of ice, our boat succeeded in killing one of them. These animals usually lie huddled together like pigs, one over the other, and are so stupidly tame as to allow a boat to approach them within a few yards without moving. When at length they are disturbed, they dash into the water in great confusion. It may be worth remarking, as a proof how tenacious the walrus sometimes is of life, that the animal killed to-day struggled violently for ten minutes after it was struck, and towed the boat twenty or thirty yards, after which the iron of the harpoon broke; and yet it was found, on examination, that the iron barb had penetrated both auricles of the heart. A quantity of the blubber was put into casks, as a winter's supply of lamp-oil.