eturned
home to the old vessel; his leg had penetrated through a port-hole. They
"digged him clear out, and he was as free from noisomeness," the record
says, "as when we first committed him to the sea. This alteration had
the ice, and water, and time, only wrought on him, that his flesh would
slip up and down upon his bones, like a glove on a man's hand. In the
evening we buried him by the others." These worthy souls, laid up with
the agonies of scurvy, knew that in action was their only hope; they
forced their limbs to labour, among ice and water, every day. They set
about the building of a boat, but the hard frozen wood had broken their
axes, so they made shift with the pieces. To fell a tree, it was first
requisite to light in fire around it, and the carpenter could only labour
with his wood over a fire, or else it was like stone under his tools.
Before the boat was made they buried the carpenter. The captain exhorted
them to put their trust in God; "His will be done. If it be our fortune
to end our days here, we are as near Heaven as in England. They all
protested to work to the utmost of their strength, and that they would
refuse nothing that I should order them to do to the utmost hazard of
their lives. I thanked them all." Truly the North Pole has its
triumphs. If we took no account of the fields of trade opened by our
Arctic explorers, if we thought nothing of the wants of science in
comparison with the lives lost in supplying them, is not the loss of life
a gain, which proves and tests the fortitude of noble hearts, and teaches
us respect for human nature? All the lives that have been lost among
these Polar regions are less in number than the dead upon a battle-field.
The battle-field inflicted shame upon our race--is it with shame that our
hearts throb in following these Arctic heroes? March 31st, says Captain
James, "was very cold, with snow and hail, which pinched our sick men
more than any time this year. This evening, being May eve, we returned
late from our work to our house, and made a good fire, and chose ladies,
and ceremoniously wore their names in our caps, endeavouring to revive
ourselves by any means. On the 15th, I manured a little patch of ground
that was bare of snow, and sowed it with pease, hoping to have some
shortly to eat, for as yet we could see no green thing to comfort us."
Those pease saved the party; as they came up the young shoots were boiled
and eaten, so their health