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Rh advanced their tents and stores only thirty miles. On the 8th of the next month everything was ready, and we prepared, Ross says, "to quit this dreary place, as we hoped, for ever. Yet with these hopes there were mingled many fears—enough to render it still but too doubtful, in all our minds, whether we might not yet be compelled to return—to return once more to despair, and perhaps to return but to die." Their situation was indeed pitiable. They were encumbered by three sick men who could not walk at all. Others there were who could scarcely walk, and who could give no assistance in drawing the sledges; but their brave companions did their best, and cheerfully took on themselves the task of carrying the sick, and dragging their stores along the rugged surface of the frozen shores. It was on the 12th of July that they reached the spot where they had left their boats the year before, and two days later a lane of water was, for the first time, seen leading to the northward. The brave commander records that few slept that night, so full were they of the anticipations of what the morrow might bring. As early as four o'clock in the morning all were employed in cutting the ice which obstructed the shore, and the sun having risen soon afterwards with a fine westerly breeze they joyfully launched their boats, embarked the stores and the sick, and at eight o'clock were under way. For two days and nights they rowed on lustily—the lane of water still opening up before them, and gradually increasing in breadth. On the third night they reached a cape, where, landing and ascending a hill, they could see that the ice to the northward and eastward was in such a state as to admit of sailing through