And this forest bed is on the shore of the Beaufort Sea in 74° north latitude, a similar one being in Prince Patrick Island, on the other side of Banks Strait. After one or two narrow escapes the _Investigator_ entered her last home at the Bay of Mercy, well within the strait, near Cape Hamilton, the most prominent of the three capes discovered from the Dundas Peninsula by Parry's lieutenant, Beechey, thirty-one years before. The winter passed, and on the 11th of April M'Clure left the ship on a sledge journey across to Parry's old quarters at Winter Harbour, which were reached on the 28th, to find nothing but a notice of M'Clintock's having been there in the previous June. Noticing Parry's inscription rock, M'Clure judiciously left on it a statement that the _Investigator_ was in want of relief at Mercy Bay. But all through that year no news from the outside came to Banks Land, and matters became serious owing to the appearance of scurvy, notwithstanding the abundance of fresh meat, for even in January a herd of reindeer trotted by. [Illustration: THE PARRY ISLANDS] Another winter went wearily, each month with a gloomier outlook than the last, and on the 5th of April the first of the scurvy patients died. Next morning M'Clure and Haswell were walking near the ship discussing how they could dig a grave in the frozen ground, when they noticed a man hurriedly approaching from the entrance of the bay, throwing up his arms and shouting at the top of his voice, his face as black as ebony. When he came within talking range the dark-faced stranger called out, "I am Lieutenant Pim, late of the _Herald_ and now in the _Resolute_; Captain Kellett is in her at Dealy Island." And soon the dog-sledge with two men came into view. Pim's arrival was most fortunate for the sufferers, for the captain, as a desperate resource, was—in spite of the doctor's protests—just about to send off two sledge parties of the invalids to take their chance of escaping somehow, as there was no hope of their recovery in the ship; and on examination by the doctor of the _Resolute_, it was found that every man of the crew was more or less affected by the disease. So the ship was abandoned in Mercy Bay, and the officers and crew, crossing to the _Resolute_, reached England by way of Hudson Strait.