and Captain Kane tried to penetrate to the Pole----" "But he didn't do it," cried Hatteras violently; "and what he didn't do we will, with God's help!" "I know, captain," answered the doctor, "and I mention it because this expedition is of necessity connected with the search for Franklin. But it had no result. I was almost forgetting to tell you that the Admiralty, considering Beechey Island as the general rendezvous of expeditions, charged Captain Inglefield, who then commanded the steamer _Phoenix_, to transport provisions there in 1853; Inglefield set out with Lieutenant Bellot, and lost the brave officer who for the second time had devoted his services to England; we can have more precise details upon this catastrophe, as our boatswain, Johnson, was witness to the misfortune." "Lieutenant Bellot was a brave Frenchman," said Hatteras, "and his memory is honoured in England." "By that time," continued the doctor, "Belcher's fleet began to come back little by little; not all of it, for Sir Edward had been obliged to abandon the _Assistance_ in 1854, as McClure had done with the _Investigator_ in 1853. In the meantime, Dr. Rae, in a letter dated the 29th of July, 1854, and addressed from Repulse Bay, which he had succeeded in reaching through America, sent word that the Esquimaux of King William's Land were in possession of different objects taken from the wrecks of the _Erebus_ and _Terror_; there was then not the least doubt about the fate of the expedition; the _Phoenix_, the _North Star_, and Collinson's vessel then came back to England, leaving the Arctic Seas completely abandoned by English ships. But if the Government seemed to have lost all hope it was not so with Lady Franklin, and with the remnants of her fortune she fitted out the _Fox_, commanded by McClintock, who set sail in 1857, and wintered in the quarters where you made your apparition; he reached Beechey Island on the 11th of August, 1858, wintered a second time in Bellot's Strait, began his search again in February, 1859, and on the 6th of May found the document which cleared away all doubt about the fate of the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_, and returned to England at the end of the year. That is all that has happened for fifteen years in these fateful countries, and since the return of the _Fox_ not a single vessel has returned to attempt success in the midst of these dangerous seas." "Well," replied Hatteras, "we will attempt it." CHAPTER XV THE "FORWARD" DRIVEN BACK SOUTH