316 
PREPARATIONS. 
I left her rig altogether to McGary. She carried 
what any one but a New London whaler would call an 
inordinate spread of canvas, a light cotton foresail of 
twelve-feet lift, a stouter mainsail of fourteen-feet lift 
with a spreet eighteen feet long, and a snug little jib. 
Her masts were of course selected very carefully, for 
we could not carry extra sticks: and we trusted to the 
good old-fashioned steering-oar rather than a rudder. 
Morton, who was in my confidence from the first, 
had all our stores ready. We had no game, and no 
meat but pork, of which we took some hundred and 
fifty pounds. I wanted pemmican, and sent the men 
out in search of the cases which were left on the floe 
by the frozen depot-party during the rescue of last 
March; but they could not find a trace of them, or 
indeed of any thing else we abandoned at that time: a 
proof, if we wanted one, how blurred all our faculties 
must have been by suffering, for we marked them as 
we thought with marvellous care. 
We lifted our boat over the side in the afternoon, 
and floated her to the crack at the Observatory Island; 
mounted her there on our large sledge “ The Faith,” 
by an arrangement of cradles of Mr. Ohlsen’s devising; 
stowed in every thing but the provisions, and carried 
her on to the bluff of Sylvia Headland: and the next 
morning a party consisting of all but the sick was 
detailed to transport her to open water; while McGary, 
Hans and myself followed with our St. John’s sledge, 
carrying our stores. 
The surface of the ice was very irregular and covered 
