Day after
day we had a clear and cloudless sky, scarcely any wind, and, with the
exception of a few days previous to the 23d of May, a warm temperature
in the shade, and quite a scorching sun. On the 3d of June we had a
shower of rain, and on the 6th it rained pretty hard for two or three
hours. After the 1st of June we could procure abundance of excellent
water upon the ice, and by the end of the first week the floe-pieces
were looking blue with it in some parts, and the snow had everywhere
become too soft to bear a man's weight.
On the 7th, the ship, still closely beset, had drifted much more to the
eastward, being within a mile of the spot where the provisions had been
deposited the preceding evening. There was now no other ice between us
and the land except the floe to which we had been so long attached; and
round this we were occasionally obliged to warp, whenever a little
slackening of the ice permitted, in order to prevent our getting too
near the rocks. In this situation of suspense and anxiety we still
remained until the evening of the 8th, when a breeze at length springing
up from the southward began to open out the ice from the point near
which we lay. As soon as the channel was three or four hundred yards
wide, we warped into the clear water, and, making sail, rounded the
point in safety, having no soundings with twenty fathoms, at one third
of a mile from a small rocky islet lying off it.
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