On May 7, 1870, they were near Cape Farewell, the southerly point of Greenland, where they expected to quit the ice-field. It was now two hundred days since their besetment, and they had drifted more than six hundred miles, with all in health save the doctor. Snow had now given place to rain, the pack was rapidly dissolving, and at the first opening of the ice toward land they left their old floe and faced in their three boats the perils of an ice-filled sea. Afflicted by snow-blindness, worn out by strenuous, unceasing labor, storm-beset at times, encompassed by closely packed broken ice--through which the boats could not be rowed or pushed and over which man could not travel--they at last reached Illuidlek Island. The voyage at starting was supposed to involve four days of navigation, but it took twenty-four days to make it. Now food became scarce for the first time, neither seals nor bears being killed, so that they were always hungry. Hegemann writes: "Talk turns on nothing but eating. Konrad was quite sad this morning; in his sleep he had consumed ham and poached eggs, one after another, but on waking felt so dreadfully hollow within." Threatened by a closing pack they hauled up, with great difficulty, their boats on a large floe. They found a low shelving edge of the ice and emptied the large boat of its contents. Rocking the boat backward and forward, head on, when it had gained a free motion, the whole crew hauled together on the painter when the boatswain cried loudly: "Pull all!" When the bow caught the edge of the ice the boat could in time be worked gradually up on the floe, but it was a heart-breaking, exhausting, prolonged labor. Storm-bound for four days, they resorted to various devices to pass the time and divert their minds from hunger. The loquacious carpenter spun old-time sea yarns, Vegesack tales of astounding character. In one story he related his experiences as captain of a gun-boat when, having no sailing directions for the North Sea, he steered by the help of a chart of the Mediterranean from Bremen to Hull. When he arrived off Hull he verified his position exactly by a sounding, which proved conclusively that he was at Ramsgate, south of the Thames. Thus did folly beguile misery. Cut off from land by closely packed ice, they finally made the journey practically on foot, carrying their food and baggage on their backs. The boats were dragged one at a time through soft snow and across icy chasms. This task left them in a state of utter exhaustion, even the captain fainting from continued overwork. From Illuidlek their voyage was easy to the Moravian missionary colony at Friedrichshaab, West Greenland, where comfort and safety were again theirs. Thus ended this wondrous voyage, which quiet heroism, complete comradeship, and full devotion to duty make one of the most striking in the annals of arctic service. PARR'S LONELY MARCH FROM THE GREAT FROZEN SEA