It was nine in the evening of the 11th when the “Alert” steamed into Discovery Harbour, and up to that date nothing had been seen of the missing men. The recent storms and the break-up of the ice had made an awful change in their prospects. The floes, scored with the sledge-tracks of twenty-one journeys, had moved off to the south, and a tumbling, heaving mass of polar pack now filled the strait from shore to shore. Look-out parties had already been despatched to the mountain-tops overlooking the strait, and we anxiously watched for the flag that would announce the discovery of the sledge-crews. With a vivid recollection of the Robeson Channel drift before us, we could not calmly contemplate the possibility that they had already started and been swept off south in the breaking-up pack. In such a case sudden destruction would be a merciful fate. There was still hope that they had not yet left the shore, and that if one of the ships could be forced across they might be rescued. Accordingly the “Alert” was got ready. Such of her men as were not yet strong enough for the roughest work were transferred to the “Discovery,” none but working hands were kept on board, and all our little valuables—journals, specimens, and so forth—were handed over to safe keeping. On the night of the 12th and morning of the 13th the attempt was made, but the full steam power of the ship was utterly helpless against the ponderous ice. It was simply impossible to bore even one half-mile into a pack of such proportions, and we were obliged to turn back and wait for a chance opening. Some hours before we made this attempt, a messenger had come down the hill with a report that the two tents had been made out with the telescope still pitched on the shore of Thank God Harbour, Polaris Bay. The signalman even thought he could distinguish figures passing to and fro between them, but the wish was father to the thought: we afterwards learnt that neither tents nor men were there; the party had really left that shore five days earlier, and embarked on the most extraordinary journey of this, or indeed of any other expedition. They had made every preparation to leave on Friday, 4th August, but when that day came, the weather suddenly changed, and storms of snow and wind made travelling impossible. It blew hard all that night, and Saturday morning brought no change; everything beyond a few yards from the tents was hidden in drifting mists of fog and snow. Thus for four days they lay weatherbound. At length, on the morning of the 8th, the sun shone through the clouds, and the wind lessened, till towards evening it fell quite calm. But as the fog and mist cleared away and let them see farther and farther across the channel, they saw that all was changed. Miles of water spread between them and the white line of pack that lay under the edge of the fog.