were they. This morning
a new sledge came to them from the ship; they got out of their bags,
packed, and got under way again. They were still running along shore,
but soon sent back the relief party which had brought the new sled, and
in a few days more set out to cross the strait, some twenty-five to
thirty miles wide, which, when it is open, as no man has ever seen it,
is one of the Northwest Passages discovered by these expeditions.

Horrible work it was! Foggy and dark, so they could not choose the road,
and, as it happened, lit on the very worst mass of broken ice in the
channel. Just as they entered on it, one black raven must needs appear.
"Bad luck," said the men. And when Mr. Pim shot a musk-ox, their first,
and the wounded creature got away, "So much for the raven," they croaked
again. Only three miles the first day, four miles the second day, two
and a half the third, and half a mile the fourth; this was all they
gained by most laborious hauling over the broken ice, dragging one
sledge at a time, and sometimes carrying forward the stores separately
and going back for the sledges. Two days more gave them eight miles
more, but on the seventh day on this narrow strait, the dragging being a
little better, the great sledge slipped off a smooth hummock, broke one
runner to smash, and "there they were."

If the two officers had a little bit of a "tiff" out there on the ice,
with the thermometer at eighteen below, only a little dog-sledge to get
them anywhere, their ship a hundred miles off, fourteen days' travel as
they had come, nobody ever knew it; they kept their secret from us, it
is nobody's business, and it is not to be wondered at. Certainly they
did not agree. The Doctor, whose sled, the "James Fitzjames," was still
sound, thought they had best leave the stores and all go back; but the
Lieutenant, who had the command, did not like to give it up, so he took
the dogs and the "James Fitzjames" and its two men and went on, leaving
the Doctor on the floe, but giving him directions to go back to land
with the wounded sledge and wait for him to return. And the Doctor did
it, like a spirited fellow, travelling back and forth for what he could
not take in one journey, as the man did in the story who had a peck of
corn, a goose, and a wolf to get across the river. Over ice, over
hummock the Lieutenant went on his way with his dogs, not a bear nor a
seal nor a hare nor a wolf to feed them with: preserved meats, which