It was advisable to follow Lieutenant Parr’s footprints, for, once off the track, the distressed party might easily be passed. He had called at Snow-house Point, hoping to find lamp and matches that would enable him to get a drink in the tent pitched there to assist returning parties, but a wolf had gnawed the tent ropes, and it lay flat on the snow. Near Castle Floe the tracks crossed and re-crossed in a complete maze, for there he had all but lost his way in a treacherous fog. A short halt was necessary to rest and feed the dogs, then we pushed on as before. At length, twenty-three hours after leaving the ship, we caught sight of a figure seated beside a loaded sledge, and resting his head upon his hands; then two others staggered up, helping a third between them; and a moment after, six men slowly emerged from among the hummocks dragging up a second sledge. The wind blowing from them towards us prevented them hearing our first shout, but they soon saw us, and with a faint cheer limped forward, poor fellows, to meet us. For a time our hearts were in our throats, and no one could speak much. Hardly one of them was recognisable. The thin, feeble voices, the swollen and frost-peeled faces and crippled limbs, made an awful contrast to the picked body of determined men we had seen march north only two months before. Four lay packed amongst the tent robes on the sledges—only four, for one had died soon after Parr left them. He was a private in the marine artillery, and belonged to the “Victoria” sledge. Poor Porter—George, as the men called him—had been one of the strongest and most energetic of the party. They had dragged him on the sledge thirty-nine days—others had been on longer—and his death greatly depressed both crews. They buried him deep in the ice not far from their camp, and had made one day’s march southwards when we met them. The place was only a mile off, so, when the wants of the survivors had been attended to, we walked back to see it. Sunlight streaming through low clouds of drifting snow made it difficult to see far, but we soon recognised the little mound on the side of a floe-hill. A rough cross, made of a sledge-batten and a paddle, and with a text written on it in pencil, stood at the head. They could do no more for him. Perhaps the sketch reproduced in this book ([Plate No. 14]) may serve as a humble memento of our shipmate’s grave, the most northern of any race or of any time.

Plate XIV.—THE MOST NORTHERN GRAVE, June, 1876.—p. [65].

A LITTLE mound of ice on the side of a floe-hill, and a rough cross made of a sledge batten and a paddle, mark our shipmate’s grave—the most northern of any race or time.

The first symptoms of scurvy appeared amongst the men only a few days after the auxiliary sledges had quitted the party on the northward march; and before the expenditure of half their provisions obliged them to turn back, they had three men on the sledges, and half the detachment crippled with stiff knees. Instead of finding the floes increase in width as they left the land, they met with nothing worthy of the name of floe. Their road lay across endless hummocks of crushed fragments, piled on each other and drifted over with snow. One half the party worked in advance, slowly hewing a road with their pickaxes. The remainder toiled after them, hauling up each of the three sledges in turn. On 12th May they reached their most northern point, north latitude 83° 20´ 26´´, a little less than four hundred miles from the Pole.

Considering the helpless state of the majority, we could not but think them most fortunate in being able to regain the land before even the strongest of them lost the strength and courage that carried their message to the ship. Looking at them as they staggered feebly along, panting at every breath, we forcibly realised the probable fate of those large parties from Franklin’s ships that remain to this day unaccounted for. Since reaching the depôt at Cape Joseph Henry, the men had had ample supplies of lime juice, and nothing now remained but to carry them to the ship before the disruption of the pack. Immediately after falling in with them, the dog-sledge had been sent back again to carry the news of their whereabouts to the relief parties led by the Captain, and in a few hours it again reappeared, carrying a pleasant surprise for the invalids—four Brent geese, swinging by the necks from the back of the sledge. A camp, to break the journey to the ship, had been formed at a little bay in Black Cliffs, where the geese had been shot, and in a few minutes two of our invalids that could best bear the journey were packed on the sledge, and whirled off towards it behind the willing dogs. The main relief parties were soon in sight—two sledges, manned in great part by officers, Captain Nares himself pulling in the drag-ropes of the leading sledge. Thus reinforced, three marches carried the whole party back to the ship. The first instalment reached her by dog-sledge on 12th June. Next day, when Flagstaff Point was rounded, and the yards and masts of the ship were again in view, the “Marco Polo” sledge went in front. Her officer and three men had throughout steadily refused to be treated as invalids, and now, hoisting their sledge pennant and the Union Jack they had so gallantly carried to the most northern point ever reached by land or sea, they led the way alongside the ship.