But ho, a pleasant change! Down we floated, till my tiny car was almost on a level with the vessel's bows; and there--oh, joy of joys--were signs, palpable and undoubted, that the crew had fared better than their ship--that they had escaped, and were gone, and had carried what they pleased away with them. At one view I comprehended this--I read it in the aperture sawn through the doubled planking, and in the fragments of casks and cases with which the ice was bestrewn around. There was a board, too, with writing upon it, nailed up conspicuously; but I tried in vain to decipher it. Under the impulse of strong excitement, I again turned abruptly toward my guide; this time, I could not obtain a glimpse of him. Methought, however, that I heard a rustle like the sound of wings, and that the inflated silk over my head became suddenly tinted with the hues of the rainbow. And so I knew that I was under the guidance of Hope; and that Despair would trouble me no more. Whither my countrymen were gone I could not conjecture; but, at least, I deemed them safe. * * * * * Away, and away, we soared upwards and sped onwards; how far, and how long, I marked not. And lo, another object! not a ship--it is a house, this time; yes, a house in the lonely wilderness of that frozen ocean, a hut upon the waves of that boundless _mer de glace_. And it was fashioned in rude form; and the material was rough blocks of ice; and snow seemed to have been used as their cement. The roof was formed by poles and spars; and across them yet hung a sailcloth covering. Roundabout the hut was a lofty wall, built apparently to shelter it from storms, and snowdrifts; and the wall was built with the same material as the house, for Nature's plentiful quarry fails not in those Polar regions, if man's hand and man's axe be brought there, to hew and shape. But for whom the shelter, and whither had they gone, who tenanted it? I knew well that the long lost had been here. None but they--no miserable, wandering tribe of Esquimaux--could have left such unmistakable marks of forethought, and skill, and energy. Near by, too, was plainly visible the icy cradle wherein a vessel had been lying, and on an even keel. But ships and men were gone--gone, but how gone, and whither? Earnestly did I gaze for some solution of this mystery; and at length I solved it, ay, plain enough; a line along the surface of the ice became distinctly visible, rugged and indented indeed, but straight, and stretching far away to the Westward. Then was I assured that Sir John and his brave comrades had been here, that they had cut out a channel for their barque, and that the ice had closed in behind them, so soon as they had passed on their way. Yes, I was on their track. And again I heard the soft rustling of the wings of Hope; and the rainbow-tinted hues of the balloon were three-fold more brilliant than before.