From this pleasing scene, however, they found themselves, the next day,
very differently situated.

On the 30th of July, in the afternoon, they were among what are called
the Seven Islands, and in the ice, with no appearance of any opening for
the ships. Between eleven and twelve at night, Mr. Crane, master of the
Racehorse, was dispatched by Captain Phipps, in the four-oared boat, to
try if he could get through, and find an opening for the ship which
might afford a prospect of getting farther; with directions, if he could
reach the shore, to go up one of the mountains, in order to discover the
state of the ice to the eastward and northward. Captain Lutwidge, who
had employed a boat, conducted by his young coxswain for the same
purpose, joined Mr. Crane on shore, and they proceeded to ascend a high
mountain, from whence the prospect extended ten or twelve leagues to the
east and north-east, over one continued plain of smooth ice, bounded
only by the horizon. They also saw land stretching to the south-east,
laid down in the Dutch charts as islands: and now plainly discovered
that the main body of ice, which the ships had traced from west to east,
actually joined to these islands; and, from them, to what is called the
north-east land. In returning to their ships, about seven in the
morning, round which the ice had, in their absence, so completely got,
that with their ice-anchors out they had moored alongside a field of
it, they were frequently obliged to haul the boats, over ice which had
closed since they went, to other openings.

At nine o'clock, in the morning, the 31st, having a light breeze to the
eastward, they cast off, and endeavoured to force through the ice; but,
at noon, finding it too close to proceed, again moored to a field. In
the afternoon they filled their casks with fresh water from the ice,
which they found very pure and soft. The field of ice, to which both