every countenance by such a report were but too visible, until, on
a nearer approach, it was found to be only an island, of no very
large extent, and that, on each side of it, the horizon still
appeared clear for several points of the compass. At eight P.M. we
came to some ice of no great breadth or thickness, extending
several miles in a direction nearly parallel to our course; and as
we could see clear water over it to the southward, I was for some
time in the hope that it would prove a detached stream, from which
no obstruction to our progress westerly was to be apprehended. At
twenty minutes past ten, however, the weather having become hazy
and the wind light, we perceived that the ice, along which we had
been sailing for the last two hours, was joined, at the distance
of half a mile to the westward of us, to a compact and impenetrable
body of floes, which lay across the whole breadth of the strait,
formed by the island and the western point of Maxwell Bay. We
hauled our wind to the northward, just in time to avoid being
embayed in the ice, on the outer edge of which a considerable surf,
the effect of the late gale, was then rolling.

While the calm and thick weather lasted, a number of the officers
and men amused themselves in the boats, in endeavouring to kill
some of the white whales which were swimming about the ships in
great numbers; but the animals were so wary, that they would
scarcely suffer the boats to approach them within thirty or forty
yards without diving. Mr. Fisher described them to be generally
from eighteen to twenty feet in length; and he stated that he had
several times heard them emit a shrill, ringing sound, not unlike
that of musical glasses when badly played; This sound, he farther
observed, was most distinctly heard when they happened to swim
directly beneath the boat, even when they were several feet under