CHAPTER XXVII.
CONCLUSION.
Why linger over the perpetual sufferings of the survivors? They themselves could never recall to their memory a clear vision of what had happened in the week after their horrible discovery of the remains of the crew. However, September 9th, by a miracle of energy, they reached Cape Horsburgh, at the end of North Devon.
They were dying of hunger; they had not eaten for forty-eight hours, and their last meal had been the flesh of their last Esquimaux dog. Bell could go no farther, and old Johnson felt ready to die. They were on the shore of Baffin's Bay, on the way to Europe. Three miles from land the waves were breaking on the edges of the ice-field. They had to await the uncertain passage of a whaler, and how many days yet?
But Heaven took pity on them, for the next day Altamont clearly saw a sail. The anguish which follows such an appearance of a sail, the tortures of disappointment, are well known. The ship seemed to approach and then to recede. Terrible are the alternations of hope and despair, and too often at the moment the castaways consider themselves saved the sail sinks beneath the horizon.
The doctor and his companions went through all these emotions; they had reached the western limit of the ice-field, and yet they saw the ship disappear, taking no note of their presence. They shouted, but in vain.
Then the doctor had a last inspiration of that busy mind which had served him in such good stead.
A floe had drifted against the ice-field.
"That floe!" he said, pointing to it.