two o'clock
Several times in the course of the first hour , the movement of the schooner was arrested by the want of sufficient room to pass between projecting points in the cliffs and the edge of the ice . On two of these occasions passages were cut with the saw , the movement of the field not answering to the impatience of the sealers . At the end of that most momentous hour , however , the craft had been hauled ahead a mile and a half , and had reached a curvature in the coast where the margin of open water was more than fifty fathoms wide , and the tracking of the vessel became easy and rapid . By two o'clock the Sea Lion was at what might be called the bottom of the Great Bay , some three or four leagues from the cove , and at the place where the long low cape began to run out in a south-easterly direction . As the wind could now be felt over the rocks , the foretopsail was set , as well as the lower sails , the latter being mainly becalmed , however , by the land ; when the people were all taken on board , the craft moving faster under her canvass than by means of the hauling lines . The wind was very fresh , and in half an hour more the south-east cape came in sight , close as were the navigators to the rocks . Ten minutes later , the Sea Lion was under reefed sails , stretching off to the southward and eastward , in perfectly clear water !