On the twelfth of August, 1872, the "Polaris" was ready, with steam up, for the return trip. On that very day there was added to the family of Hans a son. All agreed to name him Charlie Polaris, thus prettily suggesting the name of the late commander and of the ship. Little Charlie was evidently disgusted with his native country, for he immediately turned his back upon it, the ship steaming away that afternoon. The "Polaris" had made a tolerably straight course up, but now made a zig-zag one back. On she went, steaming, drifting, banging against broken floes, through the waters over which we have voyaged with Kane and Hayes, until they came into the familiar regions of Hayes's winter-quarters. On the afternoon of the fifteenth of October the wind blew a terrific gale from the north-west. The floe, in an angry mood, nipped the ship terribly. She groaned and shrieked, in pain but not in terror, for with her white oak coat of mail she still defied her icy foe, now rising out of his grasp, and then falling back and breaking for herself an easier position. The hawsers were attached to the floe, and the men stood waiting for the result of the combat on which their lives depended. At this moment the engineer rushed to the deck with the startling announcement that the "Polaris" had sprung a leak, and that the water was gaining on the pumps. "The captain threw up his arms, and yelled the order to throw every thing on the ice." No examination into the condition of the leak seems to have been made. A panic followed, and overboard went every thing in reckless confusion, many valuable articles falling near the vessel, and, of course, were drawn under by her restless throes and lost. Overboard went boats, provisions, ammunition, men, women, and children, nobody knew what nor who. It was night—an intensely dark, snowy, tempestuous night.
It was in this state of things, when the ship's stores and people were divided between the floe and her deck, that the anchors planted in the floe tore away, and the mooring lines snapped like pack-thread, and away went the "Polaris" in the darkness, striking against huge ice-cakes, and drifting none knew where. "Does God care for sparrows?" and will he not surely care for these imperiled explorers, both those in the drifting steamer, and those on the floe whom he alone can save, unhoused in an Arctic night on which no sun will rise for many weeks, exposed to the caprice of winds, currents, and the ever untrustworthy ice-raft on which they are cast?
We will leave the floe party awhile in His care, and follow the fortunes of the brave little vessel and her men.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE LAST OF THE "POLARIS."
THOSE left on board of the "Polaris" were oppressed with fears both for themselves and those on the floe. The leak in the ship was serious, and the water was gaining in the hold, and threatened to reach and put out the fires, and thus render the engine useless. Besides, the deck pumps were frozen up, and only two lower ones could be used. But "just before it was too late," hot water was procured from the boiler and poured in buckets-full into the deck-pumps, and they were thawed out. The men then worked at the pumps with an energy inspired by imminent danger of death. They had already been desperately at work for six unbroken hours, and ere long the fight for life was on the verge of failure. Just then came to the fainting men the shout "steam's up," and tireless steam came to the rescue of weary muscles.
As the dim light of the morning of October sixteenth dawned on the anxious watchers, they saw that they had been forced by the violent wind out of Baffin Bay into Smith Sound.
Not until now, since the hour of separation, had they counted their divided company. The assistant navigator, the meteorologist, all the Esquimo, and six seamen were missing; part of the dogs had also gone with the floe party. Fourteen men remained, including the commander and the mate, the surgeon, and the chaplain.