Thus had we, in a most singular manner, once more arrived at our old winter-quarters, with scarcely a single successful exertion on our parts towards effecting that object.  The distance from Ooglit to our present station was about one hundred and sixty miles along the coast.  Of this we had never sailed above forty, the rest of the distance having been accomplished, while we were immoveably beset, by mere drifting.  The interval thus employed having been barely eight days, gives an average drift to the southward of above fifteen miles per day.

In the afternoon of the 6th I was much pained at being informed by telegraph from the Hecla, that Mr. Fife, Greenland master of that ship, had just expired, an event which for some days past there had been but too much reason to apprehend; the scurvy having within the last three weeks continued to increase considerably upon him.  It is proper for me, however, both in justice to the medical officers under whose skilful and humane care he was placed, and to the means with which we were in this way so liberally supplied, to state, that during a part of that time Mr. Fife had taken so great a dislike to the various antiscorbutics which were administered to him, that he could seldom be induced to use any of them.  The disease, in consequence, reduced him to a state of extreme debility, which at length carried him off almost without pain.  The Hecla being at the time closely beset, and in a situation of great danger among the shoals off Winter Island, Captain Lyon caused the remains of the deceased to be committed to the sea with all the solemnity which circumstances would permit.

In the night of the 6th, the ships, which had before nearly closed each other, were again separated to the distance of several miles, though no motion was perceptible in the masses of ice about them.  On the evening of the 11th, however, the wind at length began to freshen from the northwest, when the ice immediately commenced driving down the inlet at the rate of a mile an hour, carrying the Fury with it, and within half a mile of the rocks, the whole way down to Cape Martineau, but keeping her in deep water.  In the mean time the Hecla had been swept into much more dangerous situations, passing along the east and south sides of Winter Island; and, after driving nearly up to Five-hawser Bay, being carried near some dangerous shoals about Cape Edwards, where Captain Lyon expected every other tide that she would take the ground.

On the 15th, when the ships had closed each other within a mile, we could see the clear water from the masthead, and the Hecla could now have been easily extricated.  Such, however, are the sudden changes that take place in this precarious navigation, that not long afterward the Fury was quite at liberty to sail out of the ice, while the Hecla was now, in her turn, so immoveably fast set, and even cemented between several very heavy masses, that no power that could be applied was sufficient to move her an inch.