250 THE SEA. 



man, and might have done this without injuring himself; but it would seem his footing 

 gave way under him, forcing him to make a still more desperate effort to extricate 

 himself. It cost him his life : he died three days afterwards, from the strain on his system. 



But there were times when travelling was not so difficult, and when they could 

 hoist their sails, and run rapidly before the wind over solid ice. It was a new sensation 

 to the men. Levels which, under the slow labour of the drag-rope, would have delayed 

 them for hours, were glided over without a halt, and the speed of the sledges made rotten 

 ice nearly as available as sound. They made more progress in one day in this manner 

 than they had previously in five. The spirits of the men rose ; " the sick mounted 

 the thwarts ; the well clung to the gunwale ; and, for the first time for nearly a year,, 

 broke out the sailors' chorus, ' Storm along, my hearty boys ! ' ' 



"Though the condition of the ice assured us/' says Kane, writing several days 

 later, " that we were drawing near the end of our sledge-journeys, it by no means 

 diminished their difficulty or hazards. The part of the field near the open water is- 

 always abraded by the currents, Avhile it remains apparently firm on the surface. In 

 some places it was so transparent that we could even see the gurgling eddies below it ; while 

 in others it was worn into open holes that were already the resort of wild fowl. But in 

 general it looked hard and plausible, though not more than a foot or even six inches in 

 thickness. 



" This continued to be its character as long as we pursued the Lyttelton Island 

 channel, and we were compelled, the whole way through, to sound ahead with the 

 boat-hook or narwal-horn. We learned this precaution from the Esquimaux, who always 

 move in advance of their sledges when the ice is treacherous, and test its strength 

 before bringing on their teams. Our first warning impressed us with the policy of 

 observing. We were making wide circuits with the whale-boats to avoid the tide-holes, 

 when signals of distress from men scrambling on the ice announced to us that the 

 Red Eric had disappeared. This unfortunate little craft contained all the dearly-earned 

 documents of the expedition. There was not a man who did not feel that the reputa- 

 tion of the party rested in a great degree upon their preservation. It had cost us 

 many a pang to give up our collections of natural history, to which every one had 

 contributed his qu?ta of labour and interest; but the destruction of the vouchers of 

 the cruise the log-books, the meteorological registers, the surveys, and the journals 

 seemed to strike them all as an irreparable disaster. 



" When I reached the boat everything was in confusion. Blake, with a line passed 

 round his waist, was standing up to his knees in sludge, groping for the document-box, 

 and Mr. Bonsall, dripping wet, was endeavouring to haul the provision-bags to a place of" 

 safety. Happily the boat was our lightest one, and everything was saved. She w r as gradually 

 lightened until she could bear a man, and her cargo was then passed out by a line and 

 hauled upon the ice. In spite of the wet and the cold and our thoughts of poor Ohlsen,. 

 we greeted its safety with three cheers. 



" It was by great good fortune that no lives were lost. Stephenson was caught 

 as he sank by one of the sledge-runners, and Morton while in the very act of drifting- 

 under the ice was seized by the hair of the head by Mr. Bonsall, and saved ! " 



