62 
ANTICIPATIONS. 
“Be it understood by any who may peradventure 
read of these things in my journal, that I express them 
nowhere else. What secret thoughts my companions 
may have are concealed from me and from each other; 
but none of them can see as I do the alternative future 
now so close at hand: bright and comforting it may 
be; but, if not, black and hopeless altogether. 
“Should Hans come back with a good supply of 
walrus, and himself unsmitten by the enemy, our sick 
would rise under the genial specific of meat, and our 
strength probably increase enough to convey our boats 
to the North Water. The Refuge Inlet Polynia will 
hardly be more than forty miles from our brig, and, 
step by step, we can sledge our boats and their cargoes 
down to it. Once at Cape Alexander, we can support 
our sick by our guns, and make a regular Capua of 
the bird-colonies of Northumberland Island. This, in 
honest truth my yet unswerving and unshaken hope 
and expectation, is what I preach to my people; and 
often in the silent hours of night I chat to some sleep¬ 
less patient of coclilearia salads and glorious feasts of 
loons and eider-ducks. 
“ On the other side, suppose Hans fails: the thought 
is horrible. The Spitzbergen victims were, at about 
this date, in better condition than we are: it was not 
until the middle of April that they began to die off. 
We have yet forty days to run before we can count 
upon the renovating blessings of animal life and re¬ 
storing warmth. Neither Riley nor Wilson can last 
half that time without a supply of antiscorbutic food. 
