her in tow, other steamers took the "Assistance" and the
"North Star"; the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer" got up their own steam, and
to the cheers of the little company gathered at Greenhithe to see them
off, they went down the Thames. At the Nore, the steamship "Desperate"
took the "Resolute" in charge, Sir Edward Belcher made the signal
"Orkneys" as the place of rendezvous, and in four days she was there, in
Stromness outer harbor. Here there was a little shifting of provisions
and coal-bags, those of the men who could get on shore squandered their
spending-money, and then, on the 28th of April, she and hers bade good
by to British soil. And, though they have welcomed it again long since,
she has not seen it from then till now.

The "Desperate" steamer took her in tow, she sent her own tow-lines to
the "North Star," and for three days in this procession of so wild and
weird a name, they three forged on westward toward Greenland,--a train
which would have startled any old Viking had he fallen in with it, with
a fresh gale blowing all the time and "a nasty sea." On the fourth day
all the tow-lines broke or were cast off however, Neptune and the winds
claimed their own, and the "Resolute" tried her own resources. The
towing steamers were sent home in a few days more, and the squadron left
to itself.

We have too much to tell in this short article to be able to dwell on
the details of her visits to the hospitable Danes of Greenland, or of
her passage through the ice of Baffin's Bay. But here is one incident,
which, as the event has proved, is part of a singular coincidence. On
the 6th of July all the squadron, tangled in the ice, joined a fleet of
whalers beset in it, by a temporary opening between the gigantic masses.
Caught at the head of a bight in the ice, with the "Assistance" and the
"Pioneer," the "Resolute" was, for the emergency, docked there, and, by
the ice closing behind her, was, for a while, detained. Meanwhile the
rest of the fleet, whalers and discovery ships, passed on by a little
lane of water, the American whaler "McLellan" leading. This "McLellan"
was one of the ships of the spirited New London merchants, Messrs.
Perkins & Smith, another of whose vessels has now found the "Resolute"
and befriended her in her need in those seas. The "McLellan" was their
pioneer vessel there.

The "North Star" of the English squadron followed the "McLellan." A
long train stretched out behind. Whalers and government ships, a