Having made the necessary observations, we went to the tents to take leave of our new acquaintance. The old man seemed quite fatigued with the day's exertions; but his eyes sparkled with delight, and we thought with gratitude too, on being presented with another brass kettle to add to the stores with which we had already enriched him. He seemed to understand us when we shook him by the hand; the whole group watched us in silence as we went into the boat, and, as soon as we had rowed a few hundred yards from the beach, quietly returned to their tents.
The wind being contrary on the 8th, we made very little progress to the southward. The soundings continuing as regular as before, we stood in-shore to eleven fathoms, and put the trawl overboard for an hour or two in the afternoon, bringing up a great quantity of sea-eggs, a few very small oysters, and some marine insects, but nothing that could furnish us with a fresh meal.
The wind having fallen, we made little progress to the southeast till the morning of the 12th, when a light breeze springing up from the southwest, all sail was made to examine the state of the ice. On approaching the floes, however, we found such a quantity of bay-ice, the formation of which upon the surface had been favoured by the late calm weather, that the Hecla was soon stopped altogether; a circumstance which gave us, as usual, much trouble in extricating ourselves from it, but not very material as regarded our farther progress to the southward, the floes being found to stretch quite close in to the land, leaving no passage whatever between them. The compasses now traversed very freely, and were made use of for the purposes of navigation in the ordinary way.
The fog continued so thick on the 16th as to oblige us to keep the ships fast to the floe. In the afternoon the deep-sea clamms were sent down to the bottom with two thousand and ten fathoms of line, which were fifty-eight minutes in running out, during which time no perceptible check could be observed, nor even any alteration in the velocity with which the line ran out. In hauling it in again, however, which occupied both ships' companies above an hour and a half, we found such a quantity of the line covered with mud as to prove that the whole depth of water was only eight hundred and nine fathoms, the rest of the line having continued to run out by its own weight, after the instrument had struck the ground. I have before had occasion to remark that, on this account, it is not easy to ascertain the actual depth of the sea in the usual manner when it exceeds five or six hundred fathoms.