LITMIR.BIZ

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under sail continually. He wintered in Port Leopold from 1848 to 1849, where he took possession of a great number of white foxes, and caused brass collars, upon which was engraved the indication of the whereabouts of ships and the store depots, to be riveted on their necks. Afterwards they were dispersed in all directions; in the following spring he began to search the coasts of North Somerset on sledges in the midst of dangers and privations from which almost all his men fell ill or lame. He built up cairns in which he inclosed brass cylinders with the necessary memoranda for rallying the lost expedition. While he was away his lieutenant McClure explored the northern coasts of Barrow Strait, but without result. James Ross had under his orders two officers who, later on, were destined to become celebrities—McClure, who cleared the NorthWest passage, and McClintock, who discovered the remains of Sir John Franklin.”

      “Yes; they are now two good and brave English captains. You know the history of these seas well, doctor, and you will benefit us by telling us about it. There is always something to be gained by hearing about such daring attempts.”

      “Well, to finish all I know about James Ross: he tried to reach Melville Island by a more westerly direction, but he nearly lost his two vessels, for he was caught by the ice and driven back into Baffin’s Sea.”

      “Driven back?” repeated Hatteras, contracting his brows; “forced back in spite of himself?”

      “Yes, and without having discovered anything,” continued the doctor; “and ever since that year, 1850, English vessels have never ceased to plough these seas, and a reward of twenty thousand pounds was offered to any one who might find the crews of the Erebus and Terror. Captains Kellett and Moore had already, in 1848, attempted to get through Behring’s Strait. In 1850 and 1851 Captain Austin wintered in Cornwallis Island; Captain Parry, on board the Assistance and the Resolute, explored Wellington Channel; John Ross, the venerable hero of the magnetic pole, set out again with his yacht, the Felix, in search of his friend; the brig Prince Albert went on a first cruise at the expense of Lady Franklin; and, lastly, two American ships, sent out by Grinnell with Captain Haven, were drifted out of Wellington Channel and thrown back into Lancaster Strait. It was during this year that McClintock, who was then Austin’s lieutenant, pushed on as far as Melville Island and Cape Dundas, the extreme points attained by Parry in 1819; it was then that he found traces of Franklin’s wintering on Beechey Island in 1845.”

      “Yes,” answered Hatteras, “three of his sailors had been buried there—three men more fortunate than the others!”

      The doctor nodded in approval of Hatteras’s remark, and continued:

      “During 1851 and 1852 the Prince Albert went on a second voyage under the French lieutenant, Bellot; he wintered at Batty Bay, in Prince Regent Strait, explored the southwest of Somerset, and reconnoitred the coast as far as Cape Walker. During that time the Enterprise and the Investigator returned to England and passed under the command of Collinson and McClure for the purpose of rejoining Kellett and Moore in Behring’s Straits; whilst Collinson came back to winter at Hong-Kong, McClure made the best of his way onward, and after being obliged to winter three times—from 1850 to ‘51; from 1851 to ‘52; and from 1852 to ‘53—he discovered the NorthWest passage without learning anything of Franklin’s fate. During 1852 and ‘53 a new expedition composed of three sailing vessels, the Resolute, the Assistance, the North Star, and two steamers, the Pioneer and Intrepid, set sail under the command of Sir Edward Belcher, with Captain Kellett under him; Sir Edward visited Wellington Channel, wintered in Northumberland Bay, and went over the coast, whilst Kellett, pushing on to Bridport in Melville Island, explored, without success, that part of the boreal land. It was at this time that news was spread in England that two ships, abandoned in the midst of icebergs, had been descried near the coast of New Scotland. Lady Franklin immediately had prepared the little screw Isabelle, and Captain Inglefield, after having steamed up Baffin’s Bay as far as Victoria Point on the eightieth parallel, came back to Beechey Island no more successful than his predecessors. At the beginning of 1855, Grinnell, an American, fitted up a fresh expedition, and Captain Kane tried to penetrate to the Pole–-“

      “But he didn’t do it,” cried Hatteras violently; “and what he didn’t do we will, with God’s help!”

      “I know, captain,” answered the doctor, “and I mention it because this expedition is of necessity connected with the search for Franklin. But it had no result. I was almost forgetting to tell you that the Admiralty, considering Beechey Island as the general rendezvous of expeditions, charged Captain Inglefield, who then commanded the steamer Phoenix, to transport provisions there in 1853; Inglefield set out with Lieutenant Bellot, and lost the brave officer who for the second time had devoted his services to England; we can have more precise details upon this catastrophe, as our boatswain, Johnson, was witness to the misfortune.”

      “Lieutenant Bellot was a brave Frenchman,” said Hatteras, “and his memory is honoured in England.”

      “By that time,” continued the doctor, “Belcher’s fleet began to come back little by little; not all of it, for Sir Edward had been obliged to abandon the Assistance in 1854, as McClure had done with the Investigator in 1853. In the meantime, Dr. Rae, in a letter dated the 29th of July, 1854, and addressed from Repulse Bay, which he had succeeded in reaching through America, sent word that the Esquimaux of King William’s Land were in possession of different objects taken from the wrecks of the Erebus and Terror; there was then not the least doubt about the fate of the expedition; the Phoenix, the North Star, and Collinson’s vessel then came back to England, leaving the Arctic Seas completely abandoned by English ships. But if the Government seemed to have lost all hope it was not so with Lady Franklin, and with the remnants of her fortune she fitted out the Fox, commanded by McClintock, who set sail in 1857, and wintered in the quarters where you made your apparition; he reached Beechey Island on the 11th of August, 1858, wintered a second time in Bellot’s Strait, began his search again in February, 1859, and on the 6th of May found the document which cleared away all doubt about the fate of the Erebus and the Terror, and returned to England at the end of the year. That is all that has happened for fifteen years in these fateful countries, and since the return of the Fox not a single vessel has returned to attempt success in the midst of these dangerous seas.”

      “Well,” replied Hatteras, “we will attempt it.”

CHAPTER XV

      THE “FORWARD” DRIVEN BACK SOUTH

      Table of Contents

      The weather cleared up towards evening, and land was clearly distinguished between Cape Sepping and Cape Clarence, which runs east, then south, and is joined to the coast on the west by a rather low neck of land. The sea at the entrance to Regent Strait was free from ice, with the exception of an impenetrable ice-bank, a little further than Port Leopold, which threatened to stop the Forward in her northwesterly course. Hatteras was greatly vexed, but he did not show it; he was obliged to have recourse to petards in order to force an entrance to Port Leopold; he reached it on Sunday, the 27th of May; the brig was solidly anchored to the enormous icebergs, which were as upright, hard, and solid as rocks.

      The captain, followed by the doctor, Johnson, and his dog Dick, immediately leaped upon the ice, and soon reached land. Dick leaped with joy, for since he had recognised the captain he had become more sociable, keeping his grudge against certain men of the crew for whom his master had no more friendship than he. The port was not then blocked up with ice that the east winds generally heaped up there; the earth, intersected with peaks, offered at their summits graceful undulations of snow. The house and lantern erected by James Ross were still in a tolerable state of preservation; but the provisions seemed to have been ransacked by foxes and bears, the recent traces of which were easily distinguished. Men, too, had had something to do with the devastation, for a few remains of Esquimaux huts remained upon the shores of the Bay. The six graves inclosing the remains of the six sailors of the Enterprise and the Investigator

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