"Seal were seen, curious as usual, but indulging in the weakness afar off. Presently two poor winter-mated little divers met my meat-seeking senses. One of these I killed with my rifle, covetously regretting that my one ball could not align his mate. This was the first game we had obtained since the fall: he was divided, poor fellow, between two of my scurvy patients. In getting this bird out, I came very near getting myself in; and that, when a ducking means a freezing, is no fun.
"10 P.M. To-night finds me knocked up. Be it known, that after crawling on my belly, not like the wisest of animals, for two hours, I came nearly within shot of a week's fresh meat. The fresh meat dived, first shaking his whisker tentacles at my disconsolate beard, leaving me half frozen and wholly discontented. Fool-like, after the long walk back, the warming, the drying, and the feeding, I returned by the other long walk to the ice-openings, tramped for two hours, saw nothing but frost-smoke, and came back again, dinnerless, with legs quaking, and spirits wholly out of tune.
"Our drift to-day, at meridian, was in the neighborhood of 9 miles; our latitude was 71° 9' 18''.
"_March_ 23, Sunday. After divine service, started for the ice-openings. We are now in the centre of an area, which we estimated roughly as four miles from north to south, and a little more east and west. On reaching what was yesterday's sea-beach, I was forced to recant in a measure my convictions as to the force of the opposing floes. Yesterday's beach existed no longer; it was swallowed up, crushed, crumbled, submerged, or uplifted in long ridges of broken ice.
"The actions were still in progress, and fast intruding upon the solid old ice which is our homestead. The ice-tables now crumbling into hummocks were from eight to fourteen inches thick, generally ten. Not even in Lancaster Sound did the destruction of surface go on more rapidly. The wind was a moderate breeze from the northwest, and the floes were advancing on each other at a rate of a knot and a half an hour, building up hummock tables along their Hue of collision. Several rose in a few minutes to a height of ten or twelve feet. I have become so accustomed to these glacial eruptions, that I mounted the upheaving ice, and rode upon the fragments--an amusement I could hardly have practiced safely before I had studied their changes.