320 EXPEDITIONS OF PARRY AND ROSS— 1^27 -ZZ. 



owing to alternate calms, and light airs blowing in every direction ; yet we 

 made way towards the vessel, and, had it remained calm where she was, 

 should soon have been alongside. Unluckily, a breeze just then sprang up, 

 and she made all sail to the south-eastward." On the point of being saved, 

 and yet to be deserted after all ! But there is no time or place now for 

 despair. There are whalers in the sound, and if the exhausted explorers 

 will but persevere, they may still fall in with one of them. A few hours 

 afterwards, another sail was seen to the northward, lying to, apparently for 

 her boats. Shall this vessel vanish also like a phantom, and make the half- 

 crazed castaways believe that all this open water and these ships are but a 

 delusion — the delirium of swift-coming death — and that they are not sailing 

 over free water, but still starving at Batty Bay, and awaiting the only 

 release that is given to the utterly forsaken 1 It would seem so, for the 

 vessel now bears up under all sail, and it is evident that she is fast sailing 

 away. Is aU this a horrible vision — an unreal mockery, then ; and this 

 width of water, these friendly sails, are they only of the stuff that dreams 

 are made ? But now the wind lulls, and the illusory vessel hangs idle in the 

 calm. " Give way, men ! " is Boss's order, and the men of the " Victory " 

 bend to their oars with a will, and row for their lives. They rapidly gain 

 on the vessel, and after rowing for nearly an hour, they have the supreme 

 happiness of seeing her heave to, with all her sails aback, and lower down 

 a boat to meet them. The boat of the vessel soon came alongside, and the 

 mate inquired whether the explorers had met with some misfortune and lost 

 their ship. "This being answered in the affirmative," says Ross, "I re- 

 quested to know the name of his vessel, and expressed our wish to be taken 

 on board . I was answered that it was the ' Isabella ' of Hull, once com- 

 manded by Captain Ross ; on which I stated that I was the identical man 

 in question, and my people the crew of the ' Victory.' That the mate who 

 commanded this boat was as much astonished at this information as he 

 appeared to be, I do not doubt ; while, with the usual blunder-headedness of 

 men on such occasions, he assured me that I had been dead two years. I 

 easily convinced him, however, that what ought to have been true, according 

 to his estimate, was a somewhat premature conclusion, as the bear-like form 

 of the whole set of us must have shown him, had he taken time to consider, 

 that we were certainly not whaling gentlemen, and that we carried tolerable 

 evidence of oxir being ' true men, and no imposters ' on our backs, and in 

 our starved and unshaven countenances. A hearty congratulation followed, 

 of course, in the true seaman style ; and, after a few natural inquiries, he 

 added that the ' Isabella ' was commanded by Captain Humphreys, when he 

 immediately went off in his boat to communicate his information on board, 

 repeating that we had long been given up as lost, not by them alone, but by 

 all England." 



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