“August 18.—Reduced our allowance of wood to six pounds a meal. This, among eighteen mouths, is one-third of a pound of fuel for each. It allows us coffee twice a day, and soup once. Our fare besides this is cold pork boiled in quantity and eaten as required. This sort of thing works badly; but I must save coal for other emergencies. I see ‘darkness ahead.’
Far North—Page 127.
“I inspected the ice again to-day. Bad! bad!—I must look another winter in the face. I do not shrink from the thought; but, while we have a chance ahead, it is my first duty to have all things in readiness to meet it. It is horrible—yes, that is the word!—to look forward to another year of disease and darkness, to be met without fresh food and without fuel. I should meet it with a more tempered sadness if I had no comrades to think for and protect.
Hope Abandoned
“August 20.—Rest for all hands. The daily prayer is no longer, ‘Lord, accept our gratitude, and bless our undertaking,’ but, ‘Lord, accept our gratitude, and restore us to our homes.’ The ice shows no change: after a boat and foot journey around the entire south eastern curve of the bay, no signs!”
My attempt to reach Beechy Island had disclosed, as I thought it would, the impossibility of reaching the settlements of Greenland.
Everything before us was now involved in gloomy doubt. Hopeful as I had been, it was impossible not to feel that we were near the climax of the expedition.