Captain Crozier, of the _Terror_, assumed command of the expedition, and as summer was at hand, everything was made ready against the time when the ice would break up. Ice-saws were fixed ready to cut passages through the floes when they began to separate, and ice-anchors were run out so that the vessels could be warped along whenever an opening occurred. Daily the crews mustered on board and looked over the ice for some sign of the breaking of their imprisonment, for some loosening of the iron grip of the ice round their vessel's sides, but all in vain. The two ships were wedged in a vast mass of ice, through which it was impossible to cut their way. Instead of breaking up in lesser fields and floes of ice, the mass remained packed, creaking, crashing, and straining by night and day as it slowly made its way nearer the coast of the mainland, carrying the ships with it until they were within 15 miles of Point Victory, and 60 miles of the mainland coast. Soon the short summer months had passed and the dark period of winter was upon them again, with the provisions daily growing scarcer, and the hope of getting their ships out of the ice fainter. Another evil came upon them when among the members of the crew scurvy, the dreaded enemy of the early Polar explorers, broke out. By the following April twenty of their number had succumbed to it, nine being officers, one of whom was Lieutenant Gore. On April 22, 1848, the remaining 105 officers and men gathered on the ice around the two ships. They had with them sledges laden with what provisions were left, and two whale-boats. Slowly and sorrowfully they bade farewell to the vessels which had been their homes for nearly three years, and set out to march over the ice to the mainland. Their plan was to push on until they reached the Great Fish River, where they might obtain succour either from travelling bands of Indians or at some outlying station of the Hudson Bay Company. Travelling at the rate of five miles a day, so rough and difficult was the route, they arrived on April 25 at the cairn where Lieutenant Gore had left the record of his journey over a year before. The canister in which it was enclosed was opened, and round the margin was written this brief, pathetic story:--