on every side where there was sufficient depth of water for hauling her off.  With the ship thus situated, and masses of heavy ice constantly coming in, it was Captain Hoppner’s decided opinion, as well as that of Lieutenants Austin and Ross, that to have laid out another anchor to seaward would have only been to expose it to the same danger as there was reason to suppose had been incurred with the other, without the most distant hope of doing any service, especially as the ship had been driven on shore by a most unfortunate coincidence, just as the tide was beginning to fall.  Indeed, in the present state of the Fury, nothing short of chopping and sawing up a part of the ice under her stern could by any possibility have effected her release, even if she had been already afloat.  Under such circumstances, hopeless as, for the time, every seaman will allow them to have been, Captain Hoppner judiciously determined to return for the present, as directed by my telegraphic communication; but being anxious to keep the ship free from water as long as possible, he left an officer and a small party of men to continue working at the pumps, so long as a communication could be kept up between the Hecla and the shore.  Every moment, however, decreased the practicability of doing this; and finding, soon after Captain Hoppner’s return, that the current swept the Hecla a long way to the southward while hoisting up the boats, and that more ice was drifting in towards the shore, I was under the painful necessity of recalling the party at the pumps, rather than incur the risk, now an inevitable one, of parting company with them altogether.  Accordingly Mr. Bird, with the last of the people, came on board at eight o’clock in the evening, having left eighteen inches water in the well, and four pumps being requisite to keep her free.  In three hours after Mr. Bird’s return, more than half a mile of closely packed ice intervened between the Fury and the open water in which we were beating, and before the morning this barrier had increased to four or five miles in breadth.

’We carried a press of canvas all night, with a fresh breeze from the north, to enable us to keep abreast of the Fury, which, on account of the strong southerly current, we could only do by beating at some distance from the land.  The breadth of the ice inshore continued increasing during the day, but we could see no end to the water in which we were beating, either to the southward or eastward.  Advantage was taken of the little leisure now allowed us to let the people mend and wash their clothes, which they had scarcely had a moment to do for the last three weeks.  We also completed the thrumming of a second sail for putting under the Fury’s keel, whenever we should be enabled to haul her off the shore.  It fell quite calm in the evening, when the breadth of the ice inshore had increased to six or seven miles.  We did not, during the day, perceive any current setting to the southward, but in the course of the night we