“If, four months ago,—surrounded by darkness and bowed down by disease,—I had been asked the question, I would have turned toward the black hills and the frozen sea, and responded in sympathy with them, ‘No.’ But with the return of light a savage people come down upon us, destitute of any but the rudest appliances of the chase, who were fattening on the most wholesome diet of the region, only forty miles from our anchorage, while I was denouncing its scarcity.”
[CHAPTER IX.]
ADVENT OF THE SECOND YEAR.
“Map 30, 1854.—It is a year ago to-day since we left New York. I am not as sanguine as I was then: time and experience have chastened me. There is everything about me to check enthusiasm and moderate hope. I am here in forced inaction, a broken-down man, oppressed by cares, with many dangers before me, and still under the shadow of a hard wearing winter, which has crushed two of my best associates. Here, on the spot, after two unavailing expeditions of search, I hold my opinions unchanged; and I record them as a matter of duty upon a manuscript which may speak the truth when I can do so no longer.
The Dogs
“June 1.—At ten o’clock this morning the wail of the dogs outside announced the return of Dr Hayes and William Godfrey. Both of them were completely snow-blind, and the doctor had to be led to my bedside to make his report. In fact, so exhausted was he, that in spite of my anxiety I forbore to question him until he had rested. I venture to say, that both he and his companion well remember their astonishing performance over stewed-apples and seal-meat.
“The dogs were not so foot-sore as might have been expected; but two of them, including poor little Jenny, were completely knocked up. All attention was bestowed on indispensable essentials of Arctic search, and soon they were more happy than their masters.”
Dr Hayes had made a due north line on leaving the brig; but, encountering the “squeezed ices” of my own party in March, he wisely worked to the eastward.