It was nine in the evening of the 11th when the “Alert” steamed into Discovery Harbour, and up to that date nothing had been seen of the missing men. The recent storms and the break-up of the ice had made an awful change in their prospects. The floes, scored with the sledge-tracks of twenty-one journeys, had moved off to the south, and a tumbling, heaving mass of polar pack now filled the strait from shore to shore.
Look-out parties had already been despatched to the mountain-tops overlooking the strait, and we anxiously watched for the flag that would announce the discovery of the sledge-crews. With a vivid recollection of the Robeson Channel drift before us, we could not calmly contemplate the possibility that they had already started and been swept off south in the breaking-up pack. In such a case sudden destruction would be a merciful fate. There was still hope that they had not yet left the shore, and that if one of the ships could be forced across they might be rescued. Accordingly the “Alert” was got ready. Such of her men as were not yet strong enough for the roughest work were transferred to the “Discovery,” none but working hands were kept on board, and all our little valuables—journals, specimens, and so forth—were handed over to safe keeping.
On the night of the 12th and morning of the 13th the attempt was made, but the full steam power of the ship was utterly helpless against the ponderous ice. It was simply impossible to bore even one half-mile into a pack of such proportions, and we were obliged to turn back and wait for a chance opening. Some hours before we made this attempt, a messenger had come down the hill with a report that the two tents had been made out with the telescope still pitched on the shore of Thank God Harbour, Polaris Bay. The signalman even thought he could distinguish figures passing to and fro between them, but the wish was father to the thought: we afterwards learnt that neither tents nor men were there; the party had really left that shore five days earlier, and embarked on the most extraordinary journey of this, or indeed of any other expedition.
They had made every preparation to leave on Friday, 4th August, but when that day came, the weather suddenly changed, and storms of snow and wind made travelling impossible. It blew hard all that night, and Saturday morning brought no change; everything beyond a few yards from the tents was hidden in drifting mists of fog and snow. Thus for four days they lay weatherbound. At length, on the morning of the 8th, the sun shone through the clouds, and the wind lessened, till towards evening it fell quite calm. But as the fog and mist cleared away and let them see farther and farther across the channel, they saw that all was changed. Miles of water spread between them and the white line of pack that lay under the edge of the fog.
This was well, for water is easier to travel over than ice. Their boat was soon launched and packed with necessary stores, and by tying empty spirit tins to the sledge they converted it into a raft and towed it behind. They had to be very careful, for the gunwale of their heavily-laden boat was only three inches out of water. Fortune favoured them, several good leads of open water were found amongst the floes, and by half-past two o’clock next afternoon they had pulled their boat and sledge through water-spaces and over floes to within ten miles of the opposite shore, then, tired with the long journey, and well satisfied with the progress made, they camped on a broad piece of old floe. The men were soon in their bags and asleep, but their leader had noticed a slight change in the appearance of the coast, and an unpleasant suspicion kept him wakeful. Once and again he crept out of the tent to have another look at the familiar bays and headlands. There was soon no doubt about it, the outline was changed, and they were further off. While they slept, the floe was fast carrying them back the way they had come. They must instantly start again, and by hard marching make up for the loss. They were soon under way, and all night toiled on over one floe after another, through pools and lanes of water, across spaces of broken rubble, and pasty bottomless sloughs of neither ice nor water. For fourteen hours they held out, then the men could do no more, rest and food were absolute necessities, but, on camping, they found to their dismay that the drift had been faster than their march, and they were four miles further off than when they started. Eleven hours slipped by in sorely needed but sorely begrudged rest, and when they next started the full danger of their situation was plain to all. They could no longer see into Lady Franklin Sound. The headlands of Cape Lieber had already hidden Miller Island, and were fast closing past Discovery Bay and Bellot Island. They were gliding helplessly into Kennedy Channel, and their provisions were already far spent. On holding a short consultation, it was resolved to relinquish any attempt to outmarch the drift of the pack, and that the only chance of safety lay in making a push across the drift for the nearest point of land, and never stopping till they reached it.
It was eight in the evening when they once more moved forward on this final effort, and for nine hours they made fair progress, but then a change came, a strong wind sprang up against them and hurried the pack still faster away from shore. Presently the floes, forced by both wind and tide, began to move with alarming violence, wheeling and turning in a most perplexing way, so that the men over and over again crossed their own track. They were now sixteen hours on the march, and every hour the land looked more distant, but they still fought on, with every thought concentrated on hurrying on at full speed. If they had stopped to consider it, there was not at this time the faintest human possibility of reaching the land against the ice-drift. But their misfortunes had reached a climax; at one in the afternoon of the 11th the wind veered to the opposite direction, and came on to blow hard. The wheeling and tossing of the floes greatly increased, but the fatal drift was checked. Providence had given them this chance, and they one and all determined to make the most of it, so, redoubling every effort, they pushed on for the land. Some fell asleep as they pulled in the drag-belts, and when they reached the edge of the pack and launched their boat, others slept at the oars. But finally, at seven in the morning of the 12th of August, land was reached, and they flung themselves down on the beach at Cape Lieber after an unprecedented march of thirty-two consecutive hours. When they had rested at this point, they had but to cross Lady Franklin Strait to reach the ships. The distance was about twelve miles, and the floes comparatively stationary. One march brought them more than half-way over, and just as they began the second, shouts and cheers coming to them across the ice heralded the arrival of a strong party from the “Alert.” They had been seen by our look-outs, and were all soon on board, and never were guests more welcome. Next day, 15th August, they reached their own ship, after an absence of no less than 130 days.
Both ships were now free to voyage southward as soon as the ice would let them leave Discovery Harbour. Bellot Island formed a sort of natural breakwater, and kept the floes outside, so that the bay all round the ships was often almost clear of ice, but beyond the island the pack showed little disposition to let us through. In Lady Franklin Strait, promising-looking lines of water wound amongst the floes in many directions, but they were only
shaped cracks thawed wide at the surface, and mere fissures six or eight feet under water. Looked down on from the cliffs of the island, they marbled the white floes with veins of green, very different from the inky blackness of real leads. But that the rapid approach of winter made escape less likely every day, we were well content to wait our opportunity, for there were many places in the neighbourhood of the “Discovery’s” winter quarters that we of the “Alert” were anxious to see. First amongst these was the coal seam discovered by her naturalist, Mr. Hart. This was only about four miles off amongst the hills to the north, but, unfortunately, in such an inaccessible position that little more than a few pounds weight of the fuel could be brought down to the ship. Coal so far north was such a curiosity, and the fossils found near it told such a strange story, that everyone wanted specimens, and there was no difficulty in getting up a strong party to visit the “mine.” So one morning a large boat-load of eager geologists, armed with picks and hammers, crossed the mouth of the harbour. Like the “breakwater” of Bellot Island, the spot where we landed bore traces of a visit from Eskimo at some very far-off time. A collection of stones marked by fire, splinters of burnt drift-wood and fragments of bones broken to get the marrow out, told plainly of some wandering hunter’s camp-fire. Half-a-mile further on, one of our party picked up a fragment of a human thigh-bone, brown and weather-worn and gnawed by foxes. Strange to say, we could not find any other part of the skeleton.
Striking inland, we passed through a number of valleys with steep rocky walls and a flat floor between, like railway-cuttings on a large scale, and at length reached a little stream winding eastward towards the channel. Following it down a short distance, we found it entering a gorge, with mountains a thousand feet high on either side. Soon the only way to advance was by wading amongst the boulders in the bed of the stream, with overhanging walls of black rock on either side, so close that we could almost touch both with outspread hands. No wonder the “Discovery’s” autumn sledge-crews had found this a rough road. Finally, the ravine ended in a very unexpected manner. A vast bank of snow and ice sloped across from mountain to mountain, and the stream disappeared under it and into an icy cave. We followed the stream, and found ourselves in Chatel’s Grotto, so called after a blue-jacket in the autumn sledge-party that had pronounced it a most comfortable camping-place. The roof was of white ice, streaked with veins of sand, and groined into all sorts of fantastic shapes. An opening overhead let in some rays of light through festoons of icicles as thick as a man’s body. On either side curious sloping shelves of ice projected out over the stream. It was decidedly a picturesque spot, and if the water in which we stood had not been so intensely cold, we might have taken longer time over our sketch. Here we were close to the coal-seam, but the worst part of the road was yet to come. The stream passed out of the far end of the grotto through a dark tunnel, so low that we had to stoop to avoid knocking our heads against the ice of the roof, and so dark that we were obliged to feel our way along by the sides, stumbling and floundering amongst the pools and boulders. Presently, however, light shone through at the other end, and we emerged into a continuation of the gorge. A bend of the stream brought us to the spot we sought. Right and left rose two great mountain slopes, with the rivulet running between them. The lower twenty or thirty feet of the right bank was a perpendicular wall of coal, streaked with yellow sulphurous lines. The surface had become brittle by exposure to the weather, but a few blows of a pick revealed a depth of shining black fuel, to all appearance as good as any we had on board.