At one time M’Clure feared that he would be obliged to spend the winter in this desolate situation, but fortunately a southerly wind arose which drove the ice off the shore and allowed him to proceed on his way. Weeks of valuable time had been wasted in the pack, and there was now nothing for him to do but to look for suitable winter quarters, which he eventually found in Mercy Bay.
Although, dreading lest his stay in the Arctic regions might be prolonged indefinitely, M’Clure found it necessary to put his men on rather short rations, the winter was passed comfortably enough, and, as soon as spring came round, he set out with seven men across the icepack to Melville Island in the hope that he might find another of the search expeditions stationed there. To his intense disappointment, all that he discovered was M’Clintock’s record of his visit of the previous year. Of ships or human beings there was not another trace. Fortunately for himself he left a notice there describing the position of the Investigator in Mercy Bay, and this ultimately proved his salvation.
When he returned to his ship he found that matters were not going too well with his men. They had, it is true, been fairly successful with their hunting, but scurvy had broken out and Dr Armstrong already had thirteen patients in his care. Worse, however, was to come, for July brought no sign of the desired thaw. Ice still choked the bay, thick ice covered the sound, and an ominous blink glowed in the sky. Early in September the frost once more had the bay in its grip and the unfortunate men realised that they were destined to spend a third winter in the ice.
M’Clure was now faced by a very difficult problem. In the first place, his pride and his sense of duty bade him to save his ship, which was still in perfect condition. In the second place, he felt that he could hardly ask his men to stay by him on the chance of release in the following summer. His solution of the problem cannot be regarded as entirely satisfactory. Calling his men on to the quarter deck one day in the early winter, he told them that he had decided that, as soon as spring came round, he would send away half of the crew in two divisions. One of these was to make for the mouth of Prince of Wales’ Strait, where he had left a boat, and thence to the coast of America, while the other was to march for Wellington Channel, where, he hoped, that they would be picked up by a whaler.
Armstrong knew that the men were quite unfit for such a journey, and told his commander so in no uncertain terms, but without producing the least effect. M’Clure was an incurable optimist and never could be induced to believe that his men were not capable of performing the impossible, so, with a view to ensuring a fairly adequate supply of provisions for the travelling parties, he cut down the rations once more. The result was that the whole crew lived in a state of perpetual hunger. The scurvy patients grew worse and those who had, up to the present, remained healthy, sickened rapidly. To add to their discomforts, the winter was one of the coldest on record, and on one occasion the thermometer registered ninety-nine degrees of frost.
Unfit though his men were for the service he contemplated for them, M’Clure set about making the final preparations for the expeditions. These were sufficiently extraordinary to startle even Dr Armstrong, accustomed as he was to his leader’s vagaries, for M’Clure informed him one day that it was his intention to dispatch the weaker half of the crew from the vessel and bade him make the necessary selection. Armstrong could only do as he was told, and, with a sad heart, he picked out thirty of the most scorbutic members of the ship’s company, and told them off into two divisions of fifteen each. As a final protest against what he evidently considered to be little short of murder, he and his assistant, Mr Piers, recorded in a letter their conviction that the men could not survive such a journey. This, however, had as little effect as his earlier representations.
Early in April the gloom that had settled upon the ship was deepened by the first appearance of death, for one of the seamen, John Boyle, fell a victim to scurvy after only one day’s illness. Fortunately, however, the clouds were soon to break, for, while M’Clure and Lieutenant Haswell were superintending the work of hewing a grave for Boyle out of the frozen earth, they were amazed to see a strange man coming towards them across the ice. So far as they could tell he was no member of their own crew, and their astonishment was increased when he began rushing across the ice, flinging up his arms and shouting wildly.
“In the name of God, who are you?” cried M’Clure, when he came within speaking distance.
“I’m Lieutenant Pim of the Resolute, now at Dealy Island,” was the answer, “and I’ve come to relieve Captain M’Clure and the Investigators.”
At first the men could not believe the evidence of their senses, but all doubts were set at rest when Pim’s sledge, with the two men who had accompanied him, and a supply of provisions put in an appearance. It seemed that M’Clure’s record at Winter Harbour had been found, and that Kellett, fearing that the Investigator might be still detained in the ice, had sent off Pim as soon as the conditions permitted, to bring its crew relief if they needed it. The journey had lasted a full month, and he only arrived just in time, for two or three days later the unfortunate sledge parties were to have started off on their terribly forlorn hope.