In their absence the remainder of the explorers were busily engaged in establishing food depôts to the south, along the route they would be compelled to take in the event of a retreat being necessary. The non-arrival of the relief steamer prior to the winter gave rise to some speculation whether it would arrive in the spring, and a plan was arranged for a retreat to the south being carried out, if no relief ship came, in the boats the expedition possessed. These consisted of a steam launch 27 feet long, an iceboat which had been abandoned by Lieutenant Beaumont in 1876, and two whale-boats. A depôt of forty days' full rations was placed at Cape Baird and another of twenty days' rations at Cape Collinson, as soon as the ice was open enough to allow the launch to proceed. Then when it had returned and all the survey parties were in, a decision was come to that if no steamer arrived by July 31 the retreat would be commenced.
July passed and August arrived, but there were no signs of the approach of any relief steamer, and, on August 9, with the boats loaded with the records of the work done and as much food as could be stored in them, the party bade farewell to Fort Conger and started on their memorable journey. The lateness of the season made navigation extremely difficult for such small craft, and they were frequently impeded by ice which would have offered no obstacle to a big steamer. They had scarcely got out of sight of the house where they had passed the two long dark winters before they were so beset with loose ice that progress was almost impossible. Then new ice formed round them, and they were hard and fast. The fact that they only carried a limited supply of fuel made their position more serious, and when, on August 18, a temporary breaking in the floes enabled them to move forward, there was a general rejoicing. But it was soon checked on discovering that they were forced inside of a huge mass of ice over fifty feet high and extending right up to the solid floe. It was impossible to turn back and fight through the drifting ice behind them, and the only hope of escape seemed to be to steam on in case there might be a channel through the floe ahead.
As they passed along the great wall of ice they were amazed at seeing a crevice run into it. Arriving opposite to it, they found that it was a cleavage which went right through the mass, and they turned into it. The enormous berg had grounded and had split asunder, leaving a passage a hundred yards long and barely twelve feet wide, the sides of which were sheer fifty feet high on either hand. Such a formation was unique, even in the Arctic regions, and the steaming through it was an adventure without a parallel.
It led them into fairly open water, and they were able to push on into Rawlings Bay before they were again beset. This time it was not the new ice but the closing in of the floes that caught them. So quickly did the masses close in that the boats were caught and "nipped" before anything could be done to save them. The men at once scrambled out on to the ice, striving to lift the lighter boats on to the floe and unloading the provisions from the others as fast as they could, lest the crack should open again and everything be lost. The nip, however, had not been so severe as to endanger the floating capacity of the boats, but the ice had closed too firmly to allow of any hopes of their being able to force their way through. A strong wind from the north, in spite of the snow and cold it would have brought, would have been welcome; but the days were provokingly calm, and the ice only moved south at its ordinary slow rate. By August 26 they had travelled 300 miles from Fort Conger and were within fifty miles of Cape Sabine, a headland where there was a large supply of stores left by Sir George Nares in 1876. If they were able to reach there before the winter night set in, there was some chance of their existing through the dreary period which, it was now evident, they were doomed to pass in that locality. And yet the spirits of the party were as bright as though a steamer were within sight of them. One of them, in his diary, wrote: "Adversity in any form would fail, I think, to dampen the spirits of the men. Our situation is desperate. Any moment the ice may crumble beneath our feet and the sea swallow up the entire party. Still, while exercising on the ice this evening, the men danced and sang as merrily as they would have done in their own homes. They are irrepressible in the face of all this uncertainty and perhaps starvation."
The end of the month found them still beset, and with barely fifty days' rations. The opinion was now divided as to the best course to adopt, whether to remain in the boats and wait on the off-chance of their drifting near Cape Sabine, or to take to the sledges and push on over the rough ice to the shore. They had been drifting for thirty miles, and only twenty now lay between them and the cape with its store of provisions. The leader was averse to leaving the boats at once, and the days dragged on until, on September 10, it was evident that the sledge journey would have to be undertaken if the shore was to be reached and a camp formed before the darkness set in.
Unfortunately when they did abandon the boats the weather changed, and a cold wind with driving snow came to make their struggle still more difficult. They tried at first to drag two of the boats with them, but one soon had to be abandoned and the party struggled on. Their sleeping-bags froze and filled with drifting snow so that they were able to obtain but little rest when they halted, and when they were moving they were always cold and miserable. Until September 28 they were struggling over the rough, difficult ice, and then their trials were further increased. They were nearing the shore, and the force of the tide, backed up by the pressure of the ice grinding along before the wind, caused the floe to crack and break up. Only by the most persistent energy and exertion were they able to get their stores and themselves on shore, though still some distance from Cape Sabine.
They had now travelled 500 miles since they left Fort Conger, and not only were the men considerably exhausted by their recent struggle, but winter was setting in very rapidly with constant and heavy storms. It was therefore decided to form a camp where they were, while the snow had not frozen too hard for them to get some stones for a shelter. They had been compelled, on their journey over the ice, to abandon everything in the way of covering save their sleeping-bags, and unless they built a hut of some description the rigour of the winter would inevitably be fatal to all.
Such stones as could be found were collected and built into a low wall forming a square of about sixteen feet. The stones were difficult to obtain, and the wall could only be made three feet high. An opening was left in one of the sides of the square and a passage way constructed, so that the entrance to the interior did not open directly on to the frozen exterior. Across the top of the walls the boat they had dragged with them over the ice was laid keel uppermost, the oars being laid under it so as to maintain it in position, the open spaces between the sides of the boat and the walls being covered with such canvas as they had. Around the stone walls and over the top, snow was piled, and their living house was complete. It sheltered them from the wind and from the extreme bitterness of the cold, but beyond that nothing could be claimed for it. Every one had to enter it on hands and knees, and, once inside, no one could stand up, while the taller men of the party were only able to sit up in the middle of the hut where the boat made the roof slightly higher.
The men arranged their sleeping-bags against the walls with the feet towards the middle of the floor, and when they had crept in through the narrow entrance, they groped their way into the bags. Then, half lying and half sitting, with their shoulders against the stones behind them, they made themselves as comfortable as they could during the long period of darkness. They divided themselves into messes for the purpose of feeding, and two cooks prepared the food, an operation that was always difficult and unpleasant. It had, of necessity, to be carried on inside the hut, and when the two men were kneeling in a cramped-up position over the make-shift for a stove in the middle of the floor, there was no room for any one else to stretch his legs. Every one had to huddle up as closely as possible, and as all the smoke from the stove had to find its way out of the hut the best way it could, the atmosphere during cooking time was far from refreshing. The heat from the stove also thawed the ground immediately under it, and the snow on the canvas over it, with the result that the cooking of every meal meant a thorough wetting as well as a choking for the cooks.
As soon as the hut was finished, a small party pushed on towards Cape Sabine in order to locate the provisions stored there. On October 9 they returned with the news that despatches had been found, stating the Proteus had foundered in the ice on July 24 just off the cape, and that the crew and relief party had started to the south so as to meet the second relief steamer Yantic, or a Swedish steamer which was known to be in the locality, and send on help to the Greely expedition.