“Though the condition of the ice assured us,” says Kane, writing several days later, “that we were drawing near the end of our sledge-journeys, it by no means diminished their difficulty or hazards. The part of the field near the open water is always abraded by the currents, while it remains apparently firm on the surface. In some places it was so transparent that we could even see the gurgling eddies below it; while in others it was worn into open holes that were already the resort of wild fowl. But in general it looked hard and plausible, though not more than a foot or even six inches in thickness.
“This continued to be its character as long as we pursued the Lyttelton Island channel, and we were compelled, the whole way through, to sound ahead with the boat-hook or narwal-horn. We learned this precaution from the Esquimaux, who always move in advance of their sledges when the ice is treacherous, and test its strength before bringing on their teams. Our first warning impressed us with the policy of observing. We were making wide circuits with the whale-boats to avoid the tide-holes, when signals of distress from men scrambling on the ice announced to us that the Red Eric had disappeared. This unfortunate little craft contained all the dearly-earned documents of the expedition. There was not a man who did not feel that the reputation of the party rested in a great degree upon their preservation. It had cost us many a pang to give up our collections of natural history, to which every one had contributed his quota of labour and interest; but the destruction of the vouchers of the cruise—the log-books, the meteorological registers, the surveys, and the journals—seemed to strike them all as an irreparable disaster.
“When I reached the boat everything was in confusion. Blake, with a line passed round his waist, was standing up to his knees in sludge, groping for the document-box, and Mr. Bonsall, dripping wet, was endeavouring to haul the provision-bags to a place of safety. Happily the boat was our lightest one, and everything was saved. She was gradually lightened until she could bear a man, and her cargo was then passed out by a line and hauled upon the ice. In spite of the wet and the cold and our thoughts of poor Ohlsen, we greeted its safety with three cheers.
“It was by great good fortune that no lives were lost. Stephenson was caught as he sank by one of the sledge-runners, and Morton while in the very act of drifting under the ice was seized by the hair of the head by Mr. Bonsall, and saved!”
On June 16th their boats were at the open water. “We see,” says Kane, “its deep indigo horizon, and hear its roar against the icy beach. Its scent is in our nostrils and our hearts.” They had their boats to prepare now for a long and adventurous navigation. They were so small and heavily laden as hardly to justify much confidence in their buoyancy; but, besides this, they were split with frost and warped by sunshine, and fairly open at the seams. They were to be caulked, and swelled, and launched, and stowed, before they could venture to embark in them. A rainy south-wester too, which had met them on arrival, was now spreading with its black nimbus over the sky as if they were to be storm-stayed on the precarious ice-beach. It was a time of anxiety.
CAPE ALEXANDER, GREENLAND.
Kane writes on July 18th, “The Esquimaux are camped by our side—the whole settlement of Etah congregated around the ‘big caldron’ of Cape Alexander, to bid us good-bye. There are Meteh and Mealik his wife, our old acquaintance Mrs. Eiderduck, and their five children, commencing with Myouk my body-guard, and ending with the ventricose little Accomadah. There is Nessark and Anak his wife; and Tellerk, ‘the right-arm,’ and Amannalik his wife; and Sip-see, and Marsumah, and Aniugnah—and who not? I can name them every one, but they know us as well. We have found brothers in a strange land.”
For many days after leaving their Esquimaux friends they were more or less beset with broken floating ice, and the weather was often extremely bad. Kane describes a gale, during which the boats were nearly swamped. At length they reached a cleft or cave in the cliff, and were shoring up their boat with blocks of ice, when they saw the welcome sight of a flock of eider ducks, and they knew that they were at their breeding grounds.
