"What makes you say so, Johnson?" asked the doctor.
"Do you see this little rise in the earth?" asked the boatswain, pointing downwards to a mound in which three elevations could be clearly seen.
"What does that mean?" asked the doctor.
"There," answered Johnson, "are the three tombs of Franklin's sailors. I'm sure of it! I'm not mistaken, and the stores must be within a hundred paces of us, and if they're not there,—it's because—"
He durst not finish his sentence; Hatteras ran forward, and terrible despair seized him. There ought to stand those much-needed storehouses, with supplies of all sorts on which he had been counting; but ruin, pillage, and destruction had passed over that place where civilized hands had accumulated resources for battered sailors. Who had committed these depredations? Wild animals, wolves, foxes, bears? No, for they would have destroyed only the provisions; and there was left no shred of a tent, not a piece of wood, not a scrap of iron, no bit of any metal, nor—what was more serious for the men of the Forward—a single lump of coal.
Evidently the Esquimaux, who have often had much to do with European ships, had finally learned the value of these objects; since the visit of the Fox they had come frequently to this great storehouse, and had pillaged incessantly, with the intention of leaving no trace of what had been there; and now a long drift of half-melted snow covered the ground.
Hatteras was baffled. The doctor gazed and shook his head. Shandon said nothing, but an attentive observer would have noticed a wicked smile about his lips.
At this moment the men sent by Wall arrived. They took it all in at a glance. Shandon went up to the captain and said,—
"Mr. Hatteras, we need not despair; fortunately we are near the entrance to Barrow Strait, which will carry us back to Baffin's Bay."
"Mr. Shandon," answered Hatteras, "we are fortunately near the entrance of Wellington Channel, and it will lead us to the north."