[Gutenberg 47857] • Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack / from the history of the first U.S. Grinnell Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to [www.million-books.com](http://www.million-books.com) where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A UGUST 28- Strange enough, / during the night, Captain Aus- / % tin, of her majesty's search squadron, with his flag-ship the Resolute, entered the same little indentation in which five of us were moored before. His steam-tender, the Pioneer, grounded off the point of Beechy Island, and is now in sight, canted over by the ice nearly to her beam ends. He has come to us not of design, but under the irresistible guidance of the ice. We are now seven vessels within hailing distance, not counting Captain Ommanney's, imbedded in the field to the westward. I called this morning on Sir John Ross, and had a long talk with him. He said that, as far back as 1847, anticipating the 'detention' of Sir John Franklin?I use his own word?he had volunteered his services for an expedition of retrieve, asking for the purpose four small vessels, something like ourown; but no one listened to him. Volunteering again in 1848, he was told that his nephew's claim to the service had received a recognition; whereupon his own was withdrawn. 'I told Sir John, ' said Ross, 'that my own experience in these seas proved that all these sounds and inlets may, by the caprice or even the routine of seasons, be closed so as to prevent any egress, and that a missing or shut-off party must have some means of falling back. It was thus I saved myself from the abandoned Victory by a previously constructed house for wintering, and a boat for temporary refuge.' All this, he says, he pressed on Sir John Franklin before he set out, and he thinks that Melville Island is now the seat of such a house-asylum. 'For, depend upon it, ' he added, 'Franklin will be expecting some of us to be following on his traces. Now, may it be that the party, whose winter quarters we have discovered, sent out only exploring detach..