Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/360

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brought to a stand-still. There does not appear to be the ghost of a chance for me. Must I own myself a defeated man? I fear so.

I was never in all my life so disheartened as I am to-night; not even when, in the midst of a former winter, I bore up with my party through hunger and cold, beset by hostile savages, and, without food or means of transportation, encountered the uncertain fortunes of the Arctic night in the ineffectual pursuit of succor.

Smith Sound has given me but one succession of baffling obstacles. Since I first caught sight of Cape Alexander, last autumn, as the vanishing storm uncovered its grizzly head, I have met with but ill fortune. My struggles to reach the west coast were then made against embarrassments of the most grave description, and they were not abandoned until the winter closed upon me with a crippled and almost a sinking ship, driving me to seek the nearest place of refuge. Then my dogs died, and my best assistant became the victim of an unhappy accident. Afterward I succeed in some measure in replacing the lost teams, on which I had depended as my sole reliance; and here I am once more baffled in the middle of the Sound, stuck fast and powerless. My men have failed me as a means of getting over the difficulties, as those of Dr. Kane did before me. Two foot parties sent out by that commander to cross the Sound failed. Ultimately I succeeded in crossing with dogs, but the passage was made against almost insuperable difficulties, so great that my companion, convinced that starvation and death only would result from a continuance of the trial, resolved to settle it with a Sharp's rifle ball; but the ball whizzed past my ear, and I got to the shore