We continued our progress northward, contending with the flood-tide and the drifting masses of ice; and the difficulties of such a navigation may be conceived from the following description of what happened to us on the 9th.

At half past eight on the morning of the 9th, a considerable space of open water being left to the northward of us by the ice that had broken off the preceding night, I left the Fury in a boat for the purpose of sounding along the shore in that direction, in readiness for moving whenever the Hecla should be enabled to rejoin us.  I found the soundings regular in almost every part, and had just landed to obtain a view from an eminence, when I was recalled by a signal from the Fury, appointed to inform me of the approach of any ice.  On my return, I found the external body once more in rapid motion to the southward with the flood-tide, and assuming its usual threatening appearance.  For an hour or two the Fury was continually grazed, and sometimes heeled over by a degree of pressure which, under any other circumstances, would not have been considered a moderate one, but which the last two or three days’ navigation had taught us to disregard, when compared with what we had reason almost every moment to expect.  A little before noon a heavy floe, some miles in length, being probably a part of that lately detached from the shore, came driving down fast towards us, giving us serious reason to apprehend some more fatal catastrophe than any we had yet encountered.  In a few minutes it came in contact, at the rate of a mile and a half an hour, with a point of the land-ice left the preceding night by its own separation, breaking it up with a tremendous crash, and forcing numberless immense masses, perhaps many tons in weight, to the height of fifty or sixty feet, from whence they again rolled down on the inner or land side, and were quickly succeeded by a fresh supply.  While we were obliged to be quiet spectators of this grand but terrific sight, being within five or six hundred yards of the point, the danger to ourselves was twofold; first, lest the floe should now swing in, and serve us much in the same manner; and, secondly, lest its pressure should detach the land-ice to which we were secured, and thus set us adrift and at the mercy of the tides.  Happily, however, neither of these occurred, the floe remaining stationary for the rest of the tide, and setting off with the ebb which made soon after.  In the mean while the Hecla had been enabled to get under sail, and was making considerable progress towards us, which determined me to move the Fury as soon as possible from her present situation into the bight I had sounded in the morning, where we made fast in five and a half fathoms alongside some very heavy grounded ice, one third of a mile from a point of land lying next to the northward of Cape Wilson, and which is low for a short distance next the sea.  At nine o’clock a large mass of ice fell off the land-floe and struck our stern; and a “calf” lying under it, having lost its superincumbent weight, rose to the surface with considerable force, lifting our rudder violently in its passage, but doing no material injury.