Thus far the weather had been favorable, and they passed the seventy-fourth degree without meeting ice. On the 7th of July, being still in Baffin's Bay, they encountered the pack. It was summer-ice, consisting of closely-set but separate floes. They could not make over three miles a day headway through it,—which they considered a useless expenditure of labor. They remained beset for twenty-one days, when the pack opened in various directions. The ships now reached Melville Bay, on the east side of Baffin's Bay,—Lancaster Sound, through which they were to pass, being upon the west. Melville Bay, from the fact that it is always crowded with icebergs, and presents in a bird's-eye view all the combined horrors and perils of Arctic navigation, has received the appellation of the "Devil's Nip." Across this formidable indentation the two vessels made their weary way, occupying five weeks in the transit. A steam-tug would have towed them across in forty-eight hours. In the middle of August the vessels entered Lancaster Sound, and, on the morning of the 21st, overhauled the Felix, engaged in the search, under the veteran Sir John Ross. The next day, the Prince Albert, one of Lady Franklin's ships, was seen, and, soon after, the intelligence was received of the discovery of traces of Franklin and his men. The navigators of both nations visited Beechey Island and saw there the evidences which we have already mentioned. The Advance and Rescue now strove in vain to urge their way to Wellington Channel. The sun travelled far to the south, and the brief summer was rapidly coming to a close. The cold increased, and the fires were not yet lighted below. On the 12th of September the Rescue was swept from her moorings by the ice and partially disabled. The pack in which they were enveloped, though not yet beset, was evidently drifting they knew not whither. The commander, convinced that all westward progress was vain for the season, resolved to return homeward. The vessels' heads were turned eastward, and slowly forced a passage through the reluctant ice. On the evening of the 14th of September, Dr. Kane was endeavoring, with the thermometer far below zero, to commit a few words to his journal, when he heard De Haven's voice. "Doctor," he said, "the ice has caught us: we are frozen up."
The Advance was now destined to undergo treatment similar to that suffered by the Terror under Captain Back. For eight mortal months she was carried, cradled in the ice, backwards and forwards in Wellington Channel, wherever the winds and currents listed. At first, before the ice around them had become solid, they were exposed to constant peril from "nips" of floating and besieging floes; but these huge tablets soon became a protection by themselves receiving and warding off subsequent attacks. Early in October, the vessels were more firmly fixed than a jewel in its setting.
They now made preparations for passing the winter. The two crews were collected in the Advance. Until the stoves could be got up, a lard-lamp was burned in the cabin, by which the temperature was raised to 12° above zero. The condensed moisture upon the beams from so many breaths caused them to drip perpetually, till canvas gutters were fitted up, which carried off a gallon of water a day. The three stoves were soon ready, and these, together with the cooking-galley, diffused warmth through the common room formed by knocking the forecastle and cabin into one. Light was furnished by four argand and three bear's-fat lamps. The entire deck of the Advance was covered with a housing of thick felt. On the 9th of November their preparations were fairly completed.
The sun ceased to rise after the 15th of November: after that, the east was as dark at nine in the morning as at midnight; at eleven there was a faint twilight, and at noon a streak of brown far away to the south. The store-room would have furnished an amateur geologist with an admirable cabinet, so totally were the eatables and drinkables changed in appearance by the cold. "Dried apples and peaches assumed the appearance of chalcedony; sour-krout was mica, the laminæ of which were with difficulty separated by a chisel; butter and lard were passable marble; pork and beef were rare specimens of Florentine mosaic; while a barrel of lamp-oil, stripped of the staves, resembled a sandstone garden-roller."
The crews soon began to suffer in health and spirits: their faces became white, like celery kept from the light. They had strange dreams and heard strange sounds. The scurvy appeared, and old wounds bled afresh. Dr. Kane endeavored to combat the disease by acting upon the imagination of the sufferers. He ordered an old tar with a stiff knee to place the member in front of a strong magnet and let it vibrate to and fro like a pendulum. A wonderful and complete cure was thus effected. He practised all sorts of amiable deceptions upon his patients,—making them take medicine in salad and gargles in beer. Not a man was lost during the voyage.
From time to time fissures would open in the ice around them with an explosion like that of heavy artillery. It became necessary to make preparations for abandoning the vessel, and sledges, boats, and provisions were gotten ready for an emergency. The men were drilled to leave the ship in a mass at the word of command. The crisis seemed to be upon them many a time and oft; but the Advance held firmly together, and the ice around her gradually became solid as granite again. Dr. Kane lectured at intervals on scientific subjects, till the return of light brought with it a return of hope and animal spirits. On the 29th of January, 1851, the sun rose above the horizon, after an absence of eighty-six days. "Never," says Dr. Kane, "till the grave-clod or the ice covers me may I forego this blessing of blessings again! I looked at him thankfully, with a great globus in my throat."
The ice-pack did not open till the close of March. Previous to this, all the successive symptoms of the coming thaw presented themselves. The ice began to smoke, and the surface became first moist and then soft. It was soon too warm to skate, and the cabin-lamps, that had burned for four months without cessation, were extinguished. The mercury rose to 32°; the housings were removed from the Advance, and the Rescue's men returned to their deserted ship. The saw was put in motion early in May; but the grand disruption of the ice, which was either to free the ships or crush them, did not occur till the 5th of June. It was five o'clock in the afternoon when the first crack was heard, and the water, spirting up, was seen following the track of the fissure. In half an hour the ice was seamed with cracks in every direction, some of them spreading into rivers twenty feet across. The Rescue was released at once: the coating of the Advance held on for three days more, parting at last under the weight of a single man. The liberated ships soon made the Greenland coast, at Godhavn, where they spent five days in reposing, in celebrating the Fourth of July, and in splicing the main-brace,—this latter being a convivial, and not a mechanical, operation. The vessels arrived safely at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard on the 1st of October, 1851. The vessels were restored to Mr. Grinnell, with the stipulation that the Secretary of the Navy might claim them, in case of need, for further search in the spring.
THE SEAL.