Nevertheless, Captain Kellet, commanding the _Resolute_, thought it wise to send a party to Mercy Bay the coming spring, not for M'Clure alone, but to seek at that place and far beyond such news as was attainable about Collinson's squadron. For this duty was selected Lieutenant Bedford C. T. Pim, R.N., a young officer of spirit and determination, who had volunteered for the journey. Kellet's advisers urged that he delay the departure until the end of March, with its longer days and warmer weather. Pim insisted on an early start, for it was a long journey. Collinson's squadron was provisioned only for that year and so would break out through the ice early from their more southerly ports. Providentially, Kellet listened to Pim's importunate pleas, as otherwise at least half of the crew of the _Investigator_ would have perished. On March 10, 1853, Pim started on this journey of nearly two hundred miles, the first long sledge trip ever attempted in an arctic expedition at such an early date--twenty-five days in advance of any other sledge journey from the _Resolute_ that year. Pim with eight men hauled the man-sledge, while Dr. Domville with one man supported him with a dog-sledge of six animals. Eleven other men were to assist them for five days. Things went badly from the very beginning, and Kellet was half inclined to recall Pim. Under frightful conditions of weather and of ice travel one man fell sick and two sledges broke down. Fearing that he would be kept back, Pim wisely stayed in the field, sending back for other men and sledges. The first night out was quite unendurable, the temperature falling to seventy-six degrees below the freezing-point. Then followed violent blizzards which storm-stayed the party for four days, during which the temperature inside their double tent fell to fifty-six degrees below freezing. One comfort to the young lieutenant was the presence of a veteran polar seaman, Hoile, who had learned all the tricks and secrets of handling gear and stores in the field during his campaigns under the famous arctic sledgeman Sir Leopold McClintock. But no skill could make men comfortable under such awful cold. For instance, the fur sleeping bags at the start had been dry, pliant, and cold-proof. Now the vapor from the men's bodies had dampened the bags which, frozen solid, would stand on end without falling, as though made of light sheet-iron. Marching onward, Pim's next trouble was with a food-cache, laid down by himself the previous autumn, which wild animals--probably bears and wolves--had plundered in large part, though some of the thick metal coverings of the solidly frozen meats had escaped with rough marks of the teeth and claws.