At the end of a week, exhausted, half-frozen and starving, they reached this refuge, and were kindly received by their fellow captains. The men were divided among the several ships, and as soon as the wind opened the ice the return voyage began. When the Golden Gate was reached, the last piece of meat was in the copper and the last loaf of bread in the oven. Out of a fleet of twenty vessels, twelve had been sunk or abandoned, with a loss of over $800,000. On the southward journey over the ice, two of the captains bethought them of some valuable furs they had left behind, and decided to return for them. They made the trip in safety and had a warm welcome from those who had remained on the ships, but the latter turned a deaf ear to their earnest appeals to return with them, and the two captains again pushed southward alone. Since that hour nothing has been seen or heard of the ships or of the 150 men who refused to leave them. In the silence and darkness of the long Arctic winter they perished and gave no sign. How passed their final hours? A grisly and gruesome story which all whalers tell offers a partial answer to this question. Many years ago Captain Warrens, of the whaler Greenland, while lying becalmed among icebergs, sighted a dismantled and apparently deserted vessel. The boat's crew sent off to the stranger found the deck deserted; but seated at a table in the cabin was the corpse of a man covered with green, damp mould. A pen was still clutched in the stiffened hand, and on the table lay a log-book containing this last entry: "We have now been enclosed in the ice seventeen days. The fire went out yesterday and our master has been trying ever since to kindle it again, without success. His wife died this morning. There is no relief." The corpse of another man was found on the floor, and in one of the cabin berths lay the dead body of a woman. The corpse of the cabin-boy crouched at the foot of the gangway. Scattered about the forecastle lay the dead bodies of the crew. The ship was barren of fuel or food. It had been frozen in the ice thirteen years. Perhaps in similar manner this later Arctic mystery may yet find startling solution.