The party on the Tegetthoff remained for the whole of the winter on the brink of death. When summer came round it brought with it hopes of release, but day after day passed by and still the floe on which the ship was fixed showed no signs of freeing her from its grasp. In July 1873 an attempt was made to measure the thickness of the ice by means of a borer; after twenty-seven feet had been penetrated the attempt had to be abandoned. In August the chances of release began to lessen considerably, and the bitter thought was beginning to assail the officers and crew that they would be obliged to return home without making a single discovery when, on the 30th of the month, a sudden and unexpected sight infused new life into them. “About midday,” says Payer, “as we were leaning on the bulwarks of the ship and scanning the gliding mists, through which the rays of the sun broke ever and anon, a wall of mist, lifting itself up suddenly, revealed to us afar off in the north-west the outlines of bold rocks, which in a few minutes seemed to grow into a radiant Alpine land! At first we all stood transfixed and hardly believing what we saw. Then carried away by the reality of our good fortune, we burst into shouts of joy, ‘Land, land, land, at last!’ There was now not a sick man on board the Tegetthoff. The news of the discovery spread in an instant. Everyone rushed on deck to convince himself, with his own eyes, that the expedition was not, after all, a failure—there before us lay the prize that could not be snatched from us. Yet not by our own action, but through the happy caprice of our floe and as in a dream had we won it; but when we thought of the floe, drifting without intermission, we felt with redoubled pain that we were at the mercy of its movements. As yet we had secured no winter harbour from which the exploration of the strange land could be successfully undertaken. For the present, too, it was not within the verge of possibility to reach and visit it. If we had left the floe, we should have been cut off and lost. It was only under the influence of the first excitement that we made a rush over our ice-field, although we knew that numberless fissures made it impossible to reach the land. But, difficulties notwithstanding, when we ran to the edge of our floe, we beheld from a ridge of ice the mountains and glaciers of the mysterious land.”

With all due pomp and circumstance they named their new discovery Franz Josef Land, drinking the health of their Emperor as they did so. Their jubilation, however, was destined to be short-lived, for almost immediately a northerly wind arose which drove their floe many miles to the south, and Franz Josef Land, though still very dear to memory, was completely lost to sight. When next they found themselves in its neighbourhood, moreover, an event which occurred towards the end of September, their sensations were less pleasurable, for storms were churning up the ice in a most terrifying manner, and they were in imminent danger of being wrecked upon a shore which, though they viewed it with eyes of pride, looked, as they had to admit, distinctly inhospitable. By the 1st of November, however, the ice had quietened down, and Payer came to the conclusion that he might safely attempt to effect a landing. The way was difficult, lying as it did over masses of broken ice which included a rampart fifty feet high, but the men made light of such obstacles, and it was a proud moment for them when they were able to set foot on land which had probably never been trodden by a human being before.

A BEAR HUNT

They found that the new country consisted of two main masses. That on which they had landed they called Wilczek Land, and the other they named Zichy Land, while the sound which separated them they christened Austria Sound. It was a bleak and desolate land enough, clothed for the most part in perpetual snow, and absolutely devoid of any signs of habitation. The vegetation was so scanty that musk-oxen or reindeer could not have supported life there, and the place seemed to be given over entirely to Polar bears, foxes, and a few migratory birds. Everything, however, depends on the point of view, and it certainly seemed Paradise to the crew of the Tegetthoff. Fortunately for them the ice soon became firmer, and they were able to explore the new land with less fear of their line of retreat being cut off. During the early spring Payer mapped out several of the islands of which he found Franz Josef Land to consist, and succeeded in penetrating as far north as Cape Fligely, the highest point attained in the old world up till then. He also added several new lands to the chart, which have been subsequently shown to be non-existent, among them being King Oscar and Petermann Lands.

It was, of course, perfectly obvious that the ship must be abandoned, and during the winter preparations were made for taking that step as soon as spring came round. The objective was Nova Zembla, where a depot of provisions had been established for them to meet eventualities. They had no need to make use of that depot, however, for while passing Cape Britwin, they fell in with a Russian schooner, the Nikolai, which took them on board and brought them safely back to Europe in September 1874.

CHAPTER XXIII
NARES AND SMITH SOUND

After the return of Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition in 1854 the British Government was content to rest on its laurels, so far as Arctic research was concerned, and to leave the field entirely to Germans, Austrians, Americans, and to such private individuals as cared to undertake the very heavy cost of equipping an expedition for the Polar regions. In the year 1874, however, it once again awoke to a sense of its responsibilities. There was still about the Pole a tract of some two and a half million square miles which had never been trodden by the foot of a civilised man, and it was felt by men of science that no satisfactory data concerning the cause and the track of storms, together with the thousand and one other things concerning the sea which commercial nations wish to know, could be obtained unless the Polar seas became rather less of a sealed book.

No time was lost in setting about the preparations, and in April of the following year two ships were commissioned for the great expedition of 1875-76, and the command was entrusted to Captain George S. Nares. The ships in question were the Alert, a steam sloop of 751 tons and 100 horse-power, and the Discovery, a steamer of 556 tons and 96 horse-power, which, under the name of the Bloodhound had already seen service as a whaler. They were fitted with all the most modern appliances, and were provisioned for three years, while among the officers of the expedition were Albert H. Markham, commander of the Alert, Pelham Aldrich, who served as a lieutenant on the same ship, and Henry F. Stevenson, who was appointed captain of the Discovery.

Accompanied by the store ship Valorous, from which they were to take additional supplies at Godhaven, the two ships set sail from Portsmouth on May 29, 1875. The passage across the Atlantic was long and boisterous, but they eventually arrived at Godhaven on July 6, where they parted company with the Valorous after taking on board everything in the way of provisions that they needed as well as twenty-four Greenland dogs. At Ritenbenk they shipped more dogs, together with two drivers, Petersen, the Dane who had served under Hayes, and Frederick, an Eskimo. At Proven they touched again, to pick up our old friend Hans Christian, whose family, undeterred by their previous experiences on the ice-floe, once more insisted on accompanying him. They reached Port Foulke on July 28, and had the good fortune to find the entrance to Smith Sound entirely free from ice. They were net, indeed, delayed until they reached Payer Harbour, a little south of Cape Sabine, where they were beset in the ice for several days, during which time Stevenson occupied himself with exploring Foulke Fiord, while Nares visited Littleton Island and Life Boat Cove and examined the cache left behind by the Polaris.