“Our Christmas passed without a lack of the good things of this life. ‘Goodies’ we had galore; but that best of earthly blessings, the communion of loved sympathies, these Arctic cruisers had not. It was curious to observe the depressing influences of each man’s home thoughts, and absolutely saddening the effort of each man to impose upon his neighbor and be very boon and jolly. We joked incessantly, but badly, too; ate of good things, and drank up a moiety of our Heidsieck; and then we sang negro songs, wanting only time, measure, and harmony, but abounding in noise; and after a closing bumper to Mr. Grinnell, adjourned with creditable jollity from table to the theatre.”
“Never,” writes Dr. Kane, “had I enjoyed the tawdry quackery of the stage half so much.
“The ‘Blue Devils’: God bless us! but it was very, very funny. None knew their parts, and the prompter could not read glibly enough to do his office. Everything, whether jocose, or indignant, or commonplace, or pathetic, was delivered in a high-tragedy monotone of despair; five words at a time, or more or less, according to the facilities of the prompting. Megrim, with a pair of seal-skin boots, bestowed his gold upon the gentle Annette; and Annette, nearly six feet high, received it with mastodonic grace. Annette was an Irishman named Daly, and I might defy human being to hear her, while balanced on the heel of her boot, exclaim, in rich masculine brogue, ‘Och, feather,’ without roaring.
“After this followed The Star Spangled Banner; then a complicated Marseillaise by our French cook, Henri; then a sailor’s hornpipe by the diversely talented Bruce; the orchestra—Stewart playing out the intervals on the Jew’s-harp from the top of a lard-cask. In fact, we were very happy fellows. We had had a foot race in the morning over the midnight ice for three purses of a flannel shirt each, and a splicing of the main brace. The day was night, the stars shining feebly through the mist.
“December 28, Saturday.
“From my very soul do I rejoice at the coming sun. Evidences not to be mistaken convince me that the health of our crew, never resting upon a very sound basis, must sink under the continued influences of darkness and cold. The temperature and foulness of air in the between-deck Tartarus, cannot be amended, otherwise it would be my duty to urge a change. Between the smoke of lamps, the dry heat of stoves, and the fumes of the galley, all of them unintermitting, what wonder that we grow feeble. The short race of Christmas Day knocked up all our officers except Griffen. It pained me to see my friend Lovell, our strongest man, fainting with the exertion. The symptoms of scurvy among the crew are still increasing, and more general. Faces are growing pale; and an indolence akin to apathy seems to be creeping over us. I long for the light. Dear, dear sun, no wonder you are worshipped!”
It may be imagined with what rejoicings they welcomed the glowing disk when on February 18 they first beheld it. Three cheers went up, and Kane himself fired a salute. Though the dawn increased, the cold twilight still continued, and the perils of their situation were ever present. Many times the conditions of the ice threatened their destruction, but not until June 5 did its appalling disruption free them. In twenty minutes the ice, as far as the eye could reach, was a vast field of moving floes. Five days later they emerged into the open water and made for Godhaven on the coast of Greenland.
Here they underwent repairs, and, undaunted by the recent perils, again turned their prows to the north. Skirting the coast of Greenland as far as the 73d degree, they sailed to the westward and spoke an English whaling ship near the Dutch Island about the 7th and 8th of July. By the 11th they were pushing their way through the accumulations of ice in Baffin Bay, and here the gallant little Prince Albert, on her way back to join the searching squadron, continued in their company until the 3d of August, when she hove off to the westward to try a more southern passage.
Pushing bravely against the odds of impenetrable ice barriers; blocked at every manœuvre to force a passage; nine more months of winter threatening the enfeebled crew; the brave De Haven determined to give up the unequal battle, and Dr. Kane makes this entry:—
“August 19, Tuesday: