being literally upon the beach, and not a drop of clear water
being visible beyond them. I then ordered the ships to be made
fast to a floe, being in eighty fathoms' water, at the distance of
four or five miles from the beach. The season had now so far
advanced as to make it absolutely necessary to secure the ships
every night from ten till two o'clock, the weather being too dark
during that interval to allow of our keeping under way in such a
navigation as this, deprived as we were of the use of compasses.

On the morning of the 8th, there being no prospect of any
immediate alteration in the ice, I directed the boats to be sent
on shore from both ships, to endeavour to procure some game, as
well as to examine the productions of this part of the island. On
going to the masthead, shortly after the boats had been
despatched, I found that the bight of ice in which the ships were
lying was not one floe, but formed by the close junction of two,
so that our situation was by no means so secure as I had supposed
for this bight was so far from being a protection to us, in case
of ice driving on shore, that it would probably be the means of
"nipping" us between the floes which formed it. I therefore
determined on immediately removing the ships in-shore, and went in
a boat to look out for a place for that purpose, there being no
alternative between this and our returning some distance to the
eastward, into the larger space of clear water which we had there
left behind us. I found that a heavy piece of ice aground in
twelve fathoms, at the distance of three hundred yards from the
beach, would suit our purpose for the Hecla, and another, in ten
fathoms, still nearer in-shore, was selected for the Griper. These
masses were from twenty to thirty feet above the sea, and each
about the length of the respective ships.