166 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [June 



the sunlit day, I visualized that 20th of May, 1855. 

 There only a few yards away lay the dismantled brig 

 solidly embedded in the harbor ice; fluttering from the 

 topmast-head, the red, white, and blue; standing upon 

 the deck ready for the long march to the south. Doctor 

 Kane and his sixteen men, scurvy riddled, but taking 

 this last and only chance for their lives. 



Our last farewell to the brig was made with more solemnity. 

 The entire ship's company was collected in our dismantled winter 

 chamber to take part in the ceremonial. It was Sunday. Our 

 moss walls had been torn down and the wood that supported them 

 burned. Our beds were off at the boats. The galley was unfurnished 

 and cold. Everything about the little den of refuge was desolate. 



We read prayers and a chapter of the Bible; and then, all stand- 

 ing silently round, I took Sir John Franklin's portrait from its frame 

 and cased it in an India-rubber scroll. ... I then addressed the party; 

 I did not affect to disguise the difficulties that were before us; but 

 I assured them that they could all be overcome by energy and subor- 

 dination to command, and that the thirteen hundred miles of ice and 

 water that lay between us and North Greenland could be traversed 

 with safety for most of us and hope for all. . . . 



We then went upon deck; the flags were hoisted and hauled 

 down again, and our party walked once or twice around the brig, 

 looking at her timbers and exchanging comments upon the scars 

 which reminded them of every stage of her dismantling. Our 

 figurehead — the fair Augusta, the httle blue-eyed girl with pink 

 cheeks who had lost her breast by an iceberg and her nose by a nip 

 off Bedevilled Beach — was taken from our bows and placed aboard 

 the Hope. "She is, at any rate, wood," said the men when I hesitated 

 about giving them the additional burden, "and if we cannot carry 

 her far we can burn her." . . . 



No one thought of the mockery of cheers; we had no festival liquor 

 to mislead our perception of the real state of things. 



It may be of interest to know that "the fair Augusta, 

 the little girl with pink cheeks," was not used for wood, 

 but was jealously guarded and cared for throughout 

 that long retreat across the ice-infested waters of Mel- 



