To our infinite satisfaction, Sandy himself was the next person we distinguished, and several others who had seen the oomiak came hurrying across the ice.
I have not time to describe the meeting of us three brothers, thus so wonderfully preserved and reunited. Sandy had come upon the floe while for a short time it remained fixed to the land-ice, and had arranged to return the next morning to rescue us, when, to his dismay, he found that it was in motion, and that any communication with the land was impossible. The boats, being damaged, were unfit at present to be launched, but the carpenters were very busily employed in repairing them. It was the captain’s intention to land as soon as they could get opposite the settlement of Friedrichsthal, should the floe hold together so long, or, should its disruption be threatened, to make the voyage in the boats. We, of course, were willing to share the fortunes of our friends.
On returning to the oomiak we bestowed the rifles and ammunition we had promised on the honest Esquimaux, to which we added several other articles of a sort they valued.
David, Ewen, and I were cordially welcomed by the captain, Sandy, and the rest of the crew, who appeared to have suffered little from their long exposure on the floe. The wreck of the Hardy Norseman, however, had broken off and gone to the bottom. We had now the boats alone to depend upon. Scarcely had the Esquimaux taken their departure and paddled away than the floe began to move. As it did so I could not help seeing our perilous position, for at any moment it might drive against a berg, which might topple over and crush us. The wind, too, which had until now been favourable, changed, and there appeared great probability of our being again driven northward. Two days had thus passed, when the look-out, who was stationed at a flag-staff on the top of a hummock, shouted, “A sail, a sail!”
All hands quickly joined him, when we beheld the joyful sight of a ship standing towards us, some way to the southward. She could not possibly fail, we thought, to see our flag. We were not mistaken. On she came. As if to hasten her progress, some of us fired off our guns, others shouted. Several of the men danced and clapped their hands, and others wept and rushed into each other’s arms. Then, as the ship approached and began to shorten sail, we ran down to the side of the floe on which she was approaching, and waved our caps and cheered. As the floe was steady, she glided up alongside, and threw her ice-anchors on to it.
“She’s the Barentz!” exclaimed David, “though her appearance has changed greatly for the better since I last saw her.”
The Barentz she was. Having been refitted, she had been the first ship to sail from Dundee in search of us, her captain calculating that, having escaped with our lives, we should be found not far off from the spot where providentially he had fallen in with us.
The remaining stores and skins, together with those belonging to my brother, and everything of value, were quickly hoisted on board, and the Barentz, having already caught several whales, before long obtained a full ship. Her head was then turned southward, and, after all our wonderful adventures and hairbreadth escapes, we reached in safety the port of Dundee.