As soon as they had given up the seal they had been watching, the whole party seemed with one accord to turn their steps homeward, in which direction, being that of the ships also, we were by this time not sorry to accompany them. We were now between three and four miles northeast of the ships, and full a mile and a half from any part of the shore. In the open water beyond the floe, the tide was running two knots to the northward, and as the ice on which we stood had been formed only within the last fortnight, and a sheet as substantial as this had before been carried away by the stream it was impossible not to feel some apprehension lest we might thus be detached from the shore, an accident that has been known to happen to Esquimaux ere now,[*] and has probably more frequently befallen them, when none have survived to tell the tale. [Footnote: Crantz, London edition, 1820, Appendix, p. 310.] As we returned towards the land, we came to a small rising on the level surface of the floe not larger than a common molehill, and of much the same shape, at which one of the Esquimaux immediately stopped. His companions, still walking on, called us away, explaining that what we saw was the work of a seal, and that it was probable the animal was about to complete his hole and to come up on the ice, in which case the man would endeavour to kill him. We watched the man at the hole, however, with a glass, for more than half an hour, observing him constantly putting his head down towards the ice, as if in the act of listening for the seal, but without otherwise changing his position; after which he followed us on board without success.