At the return of day, now getting to be later than it had been during the early months of their visit to these seas, our adventurers found themselves in the centre of vast fields of floating ice, driving away from the bergs, which, influenced by under-currents, were still floating north, while the floes drove to the southward.  It was very desirable to get clear of all this cake-ice, though the grinding among it was by no means as formidable, as when the seas were running high, and the whole of the frozen expanse was in violent commotion.  Motion, however, soon became nearly impossible, except as the schooners drifted in the midst of the mass, which was floating south at the rate of about two knots.

Thus passed an entire day and night.  So compact was the ice around them, that the mariners passed from one vessel to the other on it, with the utmost confidence.  No apprehension was felt so long as the wind stood in its present quarter, the fleet of bergs actually forming as good a lee as if they had been so much land.  On the morning of the second day, all this suddenly changed.  The ice began to open; why, was matter of conjecture, though it was attributed to a variance between the wind and the currents.  This, in some measure, liberated the schooners, and they began to move independently of the floes.  About noon, the smoke of the volcano became once more visible; and before the sun went down the cap of the highest elevation in the group was seen, amid flurries of snow.

Every one was glad to see these familiar land-marks, dreary and remote from the haunts of men as they were known to be; for there was a promise in them of a temporary termination of their labours.  Incessant pumping—­ one minute in four being thus employed on board the Vineyard craft—­was producing its customary effect; and the men looked jaded and exhausted.  No one who has not stood at a pump-break on board a vessel, can form any notion of the nature of the toil, or of the extreme dislike with which seamen regard it.  The tread-mill, as we conceive—­for our experience extends to the first, though not to the last of these occupations—­is the nearest approach to the pain of such toil, though the convict does not work for his life.

On the morning of the fourth day, our mariners found themselves in the great bay, in clear water, about a league from the cove, and nearly dead to windward of their port.  The helms were put up, and the schooners were soon within the well-known shelter.  As they ran in, Roswell gazed around him, in regret, awe, and admiration.  He could not but regret being compelled to lose so much precious time, at that particular season.  Short as had been his absence from the group, sensible changes in the aspect of things had already occurred.  Every sign of summer—­and they had ever been few and meagre—­was now lost; a chill and dreary autumn having succeeded.  As a matter of course, nothing was altered about the dwelling; the piles of wood, and other objects placed