THE VOYAGE ON THE FLOE 247 



went on and the floe diminished. Provisions they had 

 but few, but Hans and Joe were indefatigable. They 

 speared seals, caught fish, trapped birds, and, some- 

 times, a bear would scramble up on to the ice for them 

 to shoot and they never missed. In short, without 

 them the party would have starved to death. 



The floe on which the castaways passed the winter 

 was about a hundred yards long and seventy-five broad. 

 On this they voyaged down the whole length of Baffin 

 Bay and through Davis Strait, the ice melting away 

 and getting smaller and smaller as they drifted south, 

 until on the 1st of April, when it was only twenty 

 yards round, they had to take to the remaining boat, 

 the other having been used for fuel. Once they nearly 

 touched the shore, but the wind rose and off they were 

 driven in the snow. When they were picked up by the 

 sealer Tigress in 53 35', near the coast of Labrador, on 

 the 30th of April, they had drifted fifteen hundred miles 

 in the hundred and ninety-six days that had elapsed 

 since they left the ship. 



The Polaris, blown to the northward, reached land 

 at Lifeboat Cove in the entrance to Smith Sound, a 

 little north of Foulke Harbour, and here with the aid 

 of the Etah Eskimos the crew passed the winter ; and, 

 in the spring, some of them went on an expedition in 

 the Hayes country and lost the famous flag. As the 

 ship could not be made seaworthy, two flat-bottomed 

 boats were built of her materials, and on the 21st of 

 June these were found hauled up on a floe in Melville 

 Bay, and their people rescued by the whaler Ravcnscraig, 

 which shifted them into the Arctic, another Dundee 

 whaler, on board of which was Commander Markham, 



