Chap. VII. CAPTAIN G. F. LYON. 227 



refreshment for so many hours, " our situation," 

 says the Captain, " was rendered miserable in the 

 extreme." 



" In the afternoon, having well weighed in my mind all 

 the circumstances of our distressed situation, I turned the 

 hands up, and informed them that, having now lost all our 

 bower-anchors and chains, and being in consequence unable 

 to bring up in any part of the Welcome ; being exposed to 

 the sets of a tremendous tideway and constant heavy gales, 

 one of which was now rapidly sweeping us back to the south- 

 ward, and being yet above eighty miles from Repulse Bay, 

 with the shores leading to which we were unacquainted ; our 

 compass useless, and it being impossible to continue under 

 sail with any degree of safety in these dark twelve-hour nights, 

 with the too often experienced certainty that the ship could 

 not beat off a lee-shore, even in moderate weather, I had 

 determined, in making southing, to clear the narrows of the 

 Welcome, after which I should decide on some plan for our 

 future operations." — p. 105. 



Their situation indeed was a hopeless one; with- 

 out anchors, and with a crippled ship, compasses 

 which instead of guiding only misled them, what 

 plan could be devised to pursue ? To approach the 

 shore was the next step to the destruction of the 

 ship, and in that event to land in a snow-covered, 

 frozen, and desolate country, producing nothing of 

 food for man, and destitute of human beings, would 

 be equally and inevitably destruction to every living 

 creature that might have escaped from the ship. 

 Two alternatives therefore only were left — either to 

 endeavour to let the ship float with the southerly 



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