Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 2.djvu/340

 A few minutes later all four landed on a low, rocky beach.

"You must be our guide, Johnson," said the captain. "Do you know the place again?"

"Perfectly, sir," was the reply; "but I see a monument there that is new to me."

"That!" exclaimed the Doctor; "I can give you the history of that. But let us go up to it, for I expect it will best explain itself."

They soon reached it, and the Doctor, taking off his cap reverently, said:

"This is a monument erected to Franklin and his companions."

And so it was. Lady Franklin sent a tablet of marble to Dr. Kane in 1855, and entrusted another to McClintock in 1858, to be set up in Isle Beechey. McClintock executed his commission religiously, and placed this tablet beside the funeral stone raised to the memory of Bellot by Sir John Barrow. It bore the following inscription:—

''This Stone is erected near the place where they spent their last Arctic winter, and from whence they set out to triumph over difficulties or die. It betokens the hallowed memory in which they are held by admiring fellow-countrymen and friends, and the anguish, subdued by faith, of her who has lost in the leader of the expedition the most devoted and affectionate of husbands.''

This stone on a lonely shore of these distant regions, spoke sorrowfully to the heart. All that remained of Franklin and his brave band, so full of life and hope, was this marble block. And yet in spite of such gloomy warning, the Forward was about to rush on in the very path of the Erebus and Terror.