VOYAGE AND DEATH OF FRANKLIN 181 



enough supplies to last them for a time and push forward as rapidly as possi- 

 ble, while the remainder should follow at a slower rate and by shorter stages. 

 The majority were in the latter division, and only a few days elapsed after 

 the smaller band, numbering about thirty, had left, before the ravages of 

 r.curvy and semi-starvation made it possible for even less than five miles a day 

 being covered. So debilitated were all the members that further advance 

 was abandoned until they had, by another long rest, tried to recuperate 

 their energies. But the terrible bleakness of the place where they were 

 wrought havoc among them, and every day men fell down never to rise 

 again, until the only hope for the survivors lay in returning to the ships, 

 where, at least, they would have shelter, 



"Wearily they staggered over the rugged ice ridges, each man expending 

 his remaining energies in striving to carry provisions, without which only 

 death awaited them. Men fell as they walked, unnoticed by their com- 

 panions, whose only aim was to get back to the ships, and whose faculties 

 were too dimmed to understand anything else. Blindly, but doggedly, they 

 stumbled onward, silent in their agony, brave to the last when wornout 

 nature gave way and they sank down, one after the other, till none was left 

 alive and only the still figures, lying face downwards on the frozen snow, bore 

 mute witness of how they had neither faltered nor wavered in their duty, 

 but had died, as Britons always should die, true to the end." 



Thirty of the men traveled less than five miles; others pushed ahead, and 

 at last reached the cairn established by Gore. They placed within it another 

 record, this time a record of death and disaster, telling the story of Franklin's 

 end, and giving the names of the few survivors. 



It was a case of men about to die performing a service for the dead. None 

 of those who reached the cairn ever got more than a few miles from that 

 point. For a little distance they proceeded, dragging on a sledge a heavy boat, 

 their only hope if they should reach open water. Then came the crowning 

 stroke when owing to a break-up of the ice, the boat floated away, and to 

 save it they were forced to leave their food supplies behind. Then all was 

 over. The few strongest who had gone on ahead turned back to the com- 

 rades they had left behind. Together, then, they died, and the Arctic snows of 

 many a winter drifted over their bones. 



During these years public sentiment had passed from pride in the daring of 

 the expedition to anxiety over its fate, and finally into a great clamor that some- 

 thing should be done in their relief. Many enterprises of succor were 



