LAST VOYAGE OF CART. ROSS. 
465 
length, when she grounded on a rock, and, as the tide ebbed, she 
slipped o(F, and took the bottom. The situation of the Victoiy 
was now of the most alarming nature ; their only hope was, that 
she might float at high water; to enable her to do which, it 
was found necessary to lighten her, which could only be effected 
by taking every individual article out of her, which was a labor 
of no trifling character:—the danger was great; the remedy, that 
was to be applied, would have paralyzed the energies of the 
common man, and despair would have crept slowly upon them, 
as if the task, which they had to accomplish, was beyond the 
means of human power. It is not, however, the characteristic of 
the English sailor to ponder on the execution of an act, when the 
safety of his ship is in jeopardy, or which falls within the sphere 
of his duty to perform—no murmur then is heard, but heart and 
soul are combined to accomplish the act, and in the ultimate 
removal of the danger lies the reward of the sailor. 
After an extent of labor, perhaps unparalleled on board a ship, 
the Victory was literally gutted; and all her stores, provisions, 
not forgetting the flour tubs, filled with the produce of Capt. 
Ross 1 commercial undertakings with the natives, were placed on 
the beach. A foreboding, not of a very pleasant nature, did 
not fail to come across the minds ol some of the crew, whether 
their present situation might not be looked upon as the counter¬ 
part of the fate of the Fury ; and whether their stores might 
not be the fortunate means of saving some future navigators 
from starvation, in the same manner as they had been saved by 
the stores of the Fury. 
With feelings of the most intense anxiety, they awaited the 
flow of the tide, for on it their future fate depended. Should the 
Victory not float at high water, their situation was indeed des¬ 
perate in the extreme, for it then appeared to them, that no 
other alternative was left, than to leave the Victory, as the Fury 
had been left, and seek to regain their native country by reaching 
Baffin's Bay in their boats, and there attempt to fall in with some 
of the whalers, who were accustomed to frequent the entrance of 
I ancaster Sound, or the inlets farther to the southward. But, 
iven in this last refuge, as the only object to which the drowning 
‘40. 3 o 
