Time was everything, for the tide fell lower every day. At last our enemy gave up the fight, floated up, turned partly over, and sailed out through the gate, considerably smaller than when he came in. Victory came just in time; the ice opened before us across the bay and down the coast. Ice navigation is never very rapid work, every mile has to be fought for. We were only twenty-five miles from the “Discovery,” but it took two days of sleepless activity to accomplish that distance, and it was late on the evening of the 11th when we rounded Distant Cape and caught sight of our sister ship. [Illustration: ESKIMO BIRD-SHELTER.] CHAPTER XI. Serious News—The North Greenland Detachments—The Missing Sledge-crews—Drifting with the Polar Pack—A Forced March of Thirty-two Hours—“Chatel’s Grotto” and the “Coal Mine”—Climate Past and Present—The Return Southward—A Pool in Kennedy Channel—Race against Winter—New Ice—Out Fires—The North Water at Last—The “Pandora’s” Depôt—News from Home—Conclusion. There were no joyful demonstrations when the “Alert” steamed across Discovery Harbour and anchored beside her consort. Congratulations were misplaced in the face of the news which had reached us while we yet lay imprisoned at Shift Rudder Bay—news so serious that we could think or speak of little else. The last of the “Discovery’s” sledge parties had not returned. Leaving their ship on the 6th of April, 1876, and re-provisioning their sledges from the “Alert” on the 20th, her parties had crossed over Robeson Channel to the south-eastward, and reached the Greenland coast at a point twelve miles north of the spot where Hall’s cairn and record marked the most northern position attained by the sledges of the American Expedition. The “Discovery’s” crews may therefore be said to have begun their sledging where their gallant predecessors left off. The shore led to the north-east, and was piled with ice. Their path lay along banks of drifted snow, so steep that it was necessary to dig a groove for the landward runner of the sledge, to prevent it slipping down into the trenches and moats cut by the wind round the piles of sea-ice. These trenches were sometimes forty feet deep. When they were thirty-four days out from their ship, they arrived at the end of the continuous land, and here their last supporting sledge turned back, and left Lieutenant Beaumont’s sledge, the “Sir Edward Parry,” to proceed alone. Islands with steep cliffs lay before them, separated by broad fiords. Looked at from the cliffs above them, the fiords promised good travelling, for inside the line of heavy polar floes their surface was one level sheet of snow. But, unfortunately, the treacherous snow was soft. Sledge and men sank deep at every step. Pulling out each foot was like pulling off a boot, and sometimes the men preferred to creep on hands and knees rather than attempt to walk. Their ankles swelled and knees became stiff. Not a vestige of game of