At length the Governor of the Province, who lived at a town called Bulun, arrived, but he did not understand their sign-language, and so he sent no aid. He cared for the two seamen, however, and sent them to Bulun, and there it was that they fell in with Engineer Melville, whose boat's crew were by this time in safety. Melville at once started out in search of the ill-fated crew, and the result of his search was told briefly in a dispatch, dated March 24, and received in New York on May 6: "I have found De Long and his party: all dead."
Thus ends the first chapter of this melancholy story of arctic peril. The last chapter may never be told, and the fate of Lieutenant Chipp and his crew never revealed.
The names of De Long and his brave associates will live in history, and generations of sailors will be incited by the memorial tablet which is to be erected on board the St. Marys school-ship to follow in the path that these gallant men followed to their death; for that path, though stern and rugged, was the path of duty.
"IN A THOUSAND TERRORS."—From the Painting by L. Knaus.