Many expeditions were sent out to their rescue, and reports were brought in by natives of shots heard upon the ice and figures seen on the drifting floes. Fishermen, too, said that they had heard cries for help, and that they had seen what looked like a deflated balloon drifting on the sea. But, carefully though these clues were followed, they came to nothing, and it can only be supposed that, descending on some vast ice-field far from human aid, probably somewhere between Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, and Siberia, the unfortunate men perished miserably of starvation and exposure. [Illustration: ANDRÉE’S BALLOON IN ITS SHED] CHAPTER XXXII THE LATER VOYAGES OF SVERDRUP AND PEARY As we have already seen, it was as Nansen’s companion on his journey across Greenland, and as his second in command on the _Fram_, that Otto Sverdrup first acquired the taste for Arctic travel which, in 1898, led him to undertake an expedition on his own account. The primary object of his new journey was to complete the survey of the northern shores of Greenland which had been so brilliantly begun by Peary, and to discover once and for all whether there lay any land beyond it in the direction of the North Pole. Failing that, he proposed to examine Grinnell and Ellesmere Lands, of which vast tracts still remained totally unexplored. Sverdrup sailed from Upernavik on August 5, in our old friend the _Fram_, which had been refitted for the new voyage, and was soon well on his way up Smith Sound. On reaching Hayes Sound he decided to go into winter quarters there, as it was, of course, impossible to attempt to reach a much higher latitude that season, and there was plenty of good work to be done in the neighbourhood. A couple of sledge journeys across Ellesmere Island put him in possession of many new facts concerning the geographical features of that country, and, as soon as spring came round, he began his preparations for pushing north. Unfortunately, however, the season was very unfavourable, and he soon found that, for that year at any rate, his project of following the north coast of Greenland must be put aside, so he determined to explore Jones Sound, which had never before been followed to its juncture with the Polar Sea. In this he was entirely successful, and when the next winter came round it found him comfortably ensconced in winter quarters on the south coast of Ellesmere Land. It was while Sverdrup was away exploring the coast that the career of the _Fram_ was very nearly brought to an untimely end by fire. Fortunately, however, she was saved, and early in August she was afloat again. All serious thought of pushing up Smith Sound had now been abandoned, and instead, Sverdrup made for Belcher Channel, at the mouth of which the next winter was spent. During the spring and summer the work of exploration went merrily on, with the result that the indefatigable Sverdrup had soon added much of the unknown coast of North Devon to the charts.