s which tossed the ships--slowly indeed--and threatened to "nip"
them in halves. But notwithstanding all the hardships, the men bore up,
and prepared for the overland journey to Cape Herschel--a hundred miles
only!--as soon as the spring should open. As soon as possible, a
pioneer party, under Lieutenant Gore and Mr Des Voeux, of the _Erebus_,
started off to see the channel or path by which they might reach
America. When they rapidly returned to tell their comrades the good
news they had gathered, they found Sir John Franklin dead!

Shortly afterwards, in a deep crevasse in the ice, the body was laid
while the burial service was read over it by Captain Fitzjames.
Franklin, "like another Moses, fell when his work was accomplished--with
the long object of his life in view."

The movement of such ice as was still around the vessels would not take
place till very late. The ice will move, but winter may again shut the
ships in before they have traversed one half of the ninety miles still
remaining. Captains Fitzjames and Crozier consult accordingly.

The floe moves, and the imbedded ships go south with it, but there is no
water. No sailing is possible. Drifting helpless with the ice, the
_Erebus_ and _Terror_ are carried along, but unless open water be found,
they will drift back again in the autumn, or at any rate remain
imprisoned in it.

Autumn has arrived--the new ice is forming, the floe no longer moves at
all. Thirty miles have been passed over by the floe; the explorers are
so much nearer, but then the drift ceases. Sixty miles or less of ice
intervene, and then the open sea will be reached. But the doom has gone
forth. Winter closes again on the brave, the sick, and the suffering;
cold, disease, and privation are fast decimating the available hands.
The snow-cloud settles down upon the vessels, darkness shrouds them; and
when the curtain again rises, and the sun shines out, we find twenty-one
officers and men had been laid to their long, last rest in the Arctic
solitudes. One hundred and four men still remain--hungry, frozen,
patient, brave. Alas that all the bravery was no avail!

It is pitiful to dwell upon the remainder of the sad story of the
expedition. We can picture the band now reduced to such extremity that
they must all remain to die, or struggle on across the ice and snow to
Cape Herschel. They must go. They pack the boats, and put them upon
sleighs, and then wait for spring to set abou