A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE. 323 



among the grinding-, crashing ice masses? On the 27th and 28th strong gales 

 broke up the ice to some extent, and in two days the Fox drifted thirty-nine miles. But 

 the story would be as monotonous in the telling as was their life in reality were we to 

 detail it day by day. Suffice it to say, on April 24<th, after they had drifted 1,385 miles, 

 the vessel, although not by any means clear of the ice, which was dashed against it by the- 

 swell, and which often choked their screw and brought the engines to a dead stop, was 

 out of imminent danger. Their escape had been little short of miraculous, and a sailing 

 vessel, however strong, would probably never have so successfully braved the dangers of 

 the pack as did the little steam-yacht Fox. Its commander writes feelingly on the 

 26th : " At sea ! How am I to describe the events of the last two days ? It has pleased 

 God to accord to us a deliverance in which His merciful protection contrasts how strongly ! 

 with our own utter helplessness; as if the successive mercies vouchsafed to us during 

 our long winter and mysterious ice-drift had been concentrated and repeated in a single 

 act. Thus forcibly does His great goodness come home to the- mind ! " Their troubles, 

 anxieties, and doubts, were over, and two days later they were safely anchored off Holsteinborg, 

 enjoying the hospitalities of the Danes. 



M'Clintock refers, apropos of his own experience, to a whaler, whose vessel, nipped 

 in the ice, was lost in little less time than it takes to tell the story. " It was a beautiful 

 morning ; they had almost reached the North Water, and were anticipating a very successful 

 voyage; the steward had just reported breakfast ready, when Captain Deuchars, seeing 

 the floes closing together ahead of the ship, remained on deck to see her pass safely between 

 them. But they closed too quickly; the vessel was almost through when the points of ice 

 caught her sides, abreast of the mizen-mast, and, passing through, held the wreck up for 

 a few minutes, barely long enough for the crew to escape and save their boats ! Poor 

 Deuchars thus suddenly lost his breakfast and his ship ; within ten minutes her royal yards 

 disappeared beneath the surface/' The vessel was a strong one, supposed to be exactly 

 adapted for whaling, but the powerful nip she received was too much for her. The Fox, 

 in spite of her long imprisonment, was far more fortunate. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



THE LAST TIIACES. 



M'Clintock's Summer Explorations The Second Winter Sledging Parties Snow Huts Near the Magnetic Pole- Meeting 

 with Esquimaux Franklin Relics obtained Objection of Esquimaux to Speak of the Dead Hobson's Discovery of 

 the Franklin Records -Fate of the Erebus and Terror -Large Quantity of Relics Purchased from the Natives The 

 Skeleton on the Beach Fate of Crozier's Party- "As they Fell they Died" The Record at Point Victory Boat with 

 Human Remains Discovered The Wrecks never Seen Return of the Fox. 



DURING the summer of 1858 M'Clintock made several detailed examinations of Eclipse 

 Sound, Pond's Bay, Peel Strait, Regent's Inlet, and Bellot Strait, without discovering 

 the faintest trace of the lost party. The Fox was again to winter in the Arctic this time, 

 however, under favourable circumstances Port Kennedy, a harbour of Bellot Strait, being 



