“It can hardly be a matter of surprise that the reaction in the state of our feelings, consequent upon this unexpected meeting with our long-lost friends, should have been striking and immediate, and in direct proportion to our former solicitude and dejection.
“It was but five weeks ‘by the chime’ since our disastrous separation from the Prince Albert; but they were five years of dreary anxiety and despondency fast merging into something like despair. We had a jovial evening, let the reader be well assured, in our little launch that 17th of October, and a jovial housewarming, out of Her Majesty’s stores at Port Leopold, enjoyed none the less from the absence of any grim vision of a long reckoning to discharge with ‘mine host’ on the morrow. And we kept it up, too, let me tell you, with long yarns of our adventures, and rough old sea songs; and in brimming cups of famous chocolate, ‘cheering but not inebriating,’ drank most loyally (at Her Majesty’s expense) a happy meeting with H. M. S. Erebus and Terror, and their gallant crews.
“It was some days after this before our preparations for returning to the ship were completed. At last, on Wednesday, the 22d, exactly six weeks after our first detention at Whaler Point, we set out; after depositing a paper in the cylinder, containing information of our proceedings up to this date, and placing all the loose stores in proper order and security for the use of any party that should come after us.
“Our provisions and ‘traps’ of all kinds were stowed on a strong sleigh. A mast was then set, and a sail hoisted in the jolly-boat, and away we went before a spanking fair wind over the smooth ice of Leopold Harbor at a rate which ‘all the King’s horses’ could hardly have been equal to. We had not gone half across the bay, however, before our sleigh, wholly unused to this style of locomotion, broke down, and it cost us the best part of the day, before we could repair our damage and start afresh.”
“In our endeavor to reach Mr. Bellot’s encampment of the 16th,” continues Mr. Kennedy, “we continued on foot longer than we should have done, and the consequence was, that being overtaken by night before looking for camping ground, we found ourselves, before we were aware or had time to reflect on the predicament we had got into, groping about, in the darkness, and with a heavy shower of snow falling, for some bit of terra firma, (for we had been all day upon the ice), where we could pitch the tent. We stumbled at last, after making our shins more freely acquainted than was altogether agreeable with the sharp edges of the broken ice, into a fine square of clear beach, between some heavy masses of stranded ice. Choosing out the softest part of a shelving rock of limestone of which the beach was composed, we pitched the tent, spread the oilcloth, and with some coals, which we had brought with us from Whaler Point, boiled a good kettle of tea for all hands.
“All these preparations were, however, but introductory to another, which we found a most difficult problem indeed—namely, to contrive how we were all to pass the night in the single little tent we had brought with us. We all got in, certainly, and got the kettle in the middle; but as for lying down to sleep it was utterly out of the question. A London omnibus on a racing day after five o’clock, was the only parallel I could think of to our attempt to stow thirteen men, including our colossal carpenter, into a tent intended for six. At last, after some deliberation, it was arranged that we should sit down six in a row, on each side, which would leave us about three feet clear to stretch our legs. Mr. Bellot, who formed the thirteenth, being the most compact and stowable of the party, agreed to squeeze in underneath them, stipulating only for a clear foot square for his head alongside the tea-kettle. Being unprovided with a candlestick, even if there had been room to place one anywhere, it was arranged that each of us should hold the candle in his hand for a quarter of an hour, and then pass it to his neighbor, and thus by the aid of our flickering taper, through the thick steam of the boiling kettle, we had just enough light to prevent us putting our tea into our neighbor’s mouth, instead of our own.
“‘Well, boys,’ suggests our ever jovial first mate, Henry Anderson, ‘now we are fairly seated, I’m thinking, as we can do nothing else, we had best make a night of it again. What say you to a song, Dick?’ Whereupon, nothing loath, Mr. Richard Webb strikes up, in the first style of forecastle execution, ‘Susannah, don’t you cry for me,’ which is, of course, received by the company with the utmost enthusiasm, ‘Mr. Webb, your health and song,’ and general applause, and emptying of tea-cans, which Mr. John Smith, pleading inability to sing, undertakes to replenish for the night.
“‘Irvine, my lad, pass the candle, and give us the “Tailor.”’ Mr. Irvine, you must understand, gentle reader, has distinguished himself by some extraordinary performances on the blanket-bags, during our late detention at Whaler Point, in virtue of which he has been formally installed ‘Tailor of the Expedition.’
“‘The Tailor’ is accordingly given, con amore, and is a remarkable history of knight of the thimble, who, burying his goose, like Prospero his books, ‘beyond the reach of plummet,’ becomes a ‘Sailor bold,’ and in that capacity enslaves the heart of a lovely lady of incalculable wealth, who, etc., etc. We all know the rest. ‘Kenneth, you monster, take that clumsy foot of yours off my stomach, will you?’ cried out poor Mr. Bellot, smothered beneath the weight of four-and-twenty legs, upon which the carpenter, in his eagerness to comply, probably drives his foot into Mr. Bellot’s eye. And so, passing the song and the joke around, Mr. Bellot, occasionally making a sudden desperate effort to get up, and sitting down again in despair,—with a long ‘blow’ like a grampus, we make what Anderson calls ‘a night of it.’ No management, however, can make our solitary candle last beyond twelve o’clock, or thereabouts. Notwithstanding this extinguisher to the entertainments of the evening, Mr. Anderson, while some are dozing and hob-a-nobbing in their dreams, may still be heard keeping it up with unabated spirit in the dark, wakening every sleeper now and then with some tremendous chorus he has contrived to get up among his friends, for the ‘Bay of Biscay,’ or some favourite Greenland melody, with its inspiriting burthen of ‘Cheeri-lie, ah! cheeri-lie!’”
