"In search of Sir John Franklin."

He was not the first to go in search of this great Arctic explorer; he would not be the last. Just seven years before, Sir John Franklin had sailed in search of the North-West Passage, but he had never returned. Ship after ship had been fitted out, ship after ship had sailed and returned with no news of the missing crew! Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, all had competed for the honour which should belong to the one who could discover the fate of Franklin and his men, and set at rest the deep anxiety felt on their behalf.

It was on May 30, 1853, amid salutes and cheers of farewell, that Kane left New York in the Advance, a little brig of some one hundred and forty-four tons, already tried in the Arctic ice.

The crew consisted of some eighteen picked men, all ready to do and to dare. The equipment was simple; their food was plain and rough.

Kane had been before to the Arctic regions as surgeon on board the Advance; he had already faced that dreary land of everlasting ice and snow; he knew what hardships and sorrows awaited him there. He was a small, frail-looking man, suffering often and severely from rheumatism; unfit, to all appearance, for the perils he must face, but with pluck to go through anything, and with a determination to trace Franklin at all costs.

There is a story told of his courage when he sailed before in the Advance. No sooner had the vessel started than terrible sea-sickness seized Kane, and for thirty-one days he was unable to move from his berth. Reduced to a mere bag of bones, he was completely knocked up before Whale-Fish Island was reached. Meeting with an English transport here, the captain of the ship arranged that Kane should be sent home invalided on full pay. He had only to certify his own unfitness for further service.

Kane looked at his captain in blank dismay. Was this to be the end of his Arctic exploration? Then, after a spasm of painful feeling, which melted the captain's very heart, he turned and said firmly,—

"I won't do it."

The ship sailed on. Kane lived down his sea-sickness, and soon after became the most active man on board.

On his return, fifteen months later, his health entirely gave way. And yet he was ready now to try again.

Eighteen days' sailing found the Advance at St. John's, Newfoundland. After taking on board a team of Newfoundland dogs, the little brig was headed for the coast of Greenland. Here they took on board Hans Christian, an Eskimo hunter, who saved their lives many a time by procuring them fresh food when they were starving. They lingered along the coast of Greenland for nine or ten days; and then, having bought a supply of reindeer skins and sealskin boots, they put to sea again, beating to the northward in the teeth of a heavy gale.

Coasting along, they passed many an Eskimo settlement, and many an old friend of three years ago turned out to welcome Dr. Kane. Here was his former patient Anna, since married to a fat Eskimo; here was Anna's mother, who insisted on sewing up the reindeer skins into possible garments for the captain and his crew to wear. Then on again, past the Horse's Head and Duck Islands, where the Advance had grounded three years before, on through heavy ice fogs, right into the heart of the icebergs!

By the sixth of August they had reached Smith's Sound, beyond which no European or American had as yet ventured.

"As we look far to the west," says Kane in his diary, "the snow comes down to the water's edge; on the right we have an array of cliffs some five hundred yards in height, with precipices sheer down into the sea. They look down on us as if they would challenge our right to pass."

Still the Advance sailed on under the dark shadow of the cliffs, sailed on into the desolate, unknown seas!

Kane had made up his mind to force his way to the north as far as he could in search of the missing Franklin; but in case of accident, so that retreat should not be wholly cut off, he landed on an island, and buried some boats and food with stones and sand. Then they built a cairn, wedged a staff into the crevices of the rock, waved the American flag, and gave three cheers as heartily as they could in the freezing midnight air.

To feed the fifty dogs on board was becoming more difficult daily. True, they once found a dead sea-unicorn, which lasted these "ravening wolves" some time; but sea-unicorns did not turn up every day.

"Unruly, thieving, wild beast pack," cries Kane, in despair; "not a bear's paw or basket of mosses, or any specimen whatever, can leave your hands for a moment without their making a rush at it, and after a yelping scramble, swallowing it down at a gulp."

They even ate Kane's feather bed!

For the next three weeks the Advance was practically ice-bound, waiting for a north wind to clear the ice and give her free passage onward. Instead of this came a gale from the south. And such a gale! The sky grew dark, and the crew prepared for a storm, with three good hawsers out ahead to keep the ship steady and all snug on board.

On came the storm fiercer and fiercer; the ice began to drive wildly about; the gale roared like a lion to the southward. Suddenly snap went one cord; half a minute later, and "twang, twang," the whole line gave. The ship was swinging by one hawser only.

"Captain Kane, she won't last much longer," cried one of the crew.

Almost as he spoke, with the noise of a shotted gun, the third hawser gave way, and the Advance was dragged out by the wild ice at the mercy of the wind and sea. They managed to beat about, keeping some sort of command of the helm, till early next morning. But they were close to the mass of ice now, ever grinding up into a great pile. In despair, they dropped their heaviest anchor; but the ice torrent took it away, and they were helplessly tossed about by an ever-increasing wind. One upturned mass of ice rose above their gunwale, smashed in their bulwarks, and deposited half a ton of ice in a great lump on their deck. The stanch little brig bore herself as if she had a charmed life.

But now a new enemy appeared in the shape of a number of great icebergs. Would they now be dashed to pieces against them, or might they not offer some refuge from the storm? The icebergs were moving slowly. A brilliant idea struck Kane. Why not make the iceberg tow them? Securing an anchor on the sloping side of one, and tying on a whale line, they attached themselves, and the great ice horse towed them bravely on. The spray dashed up over them, the icebergs closed in on them as they advanced, till suddenly the Advance was thrown up the sloping side of an iceberg amid a broken mass of ice. The crew, too glad to be at rest after their strain of thirty-six hours, secured her somehow, and overcome with fatigue fell into their berths and slept.

The gale abated; they harnessed themselves like mules on a canal, and towed their ship along the icy coast. They had sailed farther north than any of their predecessors already; but an early winter threatened them. Was it possible that Franklin had got farther north before the winter darkness and ice closed him in? Snow fell heavily and steadily, and further progress became impossible.

"Let us sail to the south," said the crew, "and wait there till the darkness is past and the ice melts with the return of the sun."

But Kane saw the loss of time this would involve. They were men; they would not shirk their duty. They resolved to winter the brig at the head of a bay, latitude 78° 37', whence sledging parties could be dispatched. Then hot coffee was served out, and amid cheering songs the little brig moved on to her winter quarters.

From time to time sledge parties went out on expeditions over the ice; but they returned with the same report—nothing to be seen but a solid sea of ice and great barriers of icebergs.

The winter came on fast. It was now September, and they must not reckon on seeing the sun again after another month. There was plenty to be done—a store-house for the food to be erected, provisions to be looked after, the dogs to be trained. So darker grew the days and blacker grew the nights now; they could just read the thermometer at noonday without a light and that was all.

By November all was darkness, and even to read the thermometer required a lantern. And ninety days of this to look forward to, and twenty-four long hours to each day. No wonder life was monotonous.

"We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper; the fingers cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike, and we have nothing to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun."

Trying as this was to the men, it was yet more trying to the poor dogs. One by one a sort of madness seized them, and one by one they died, till out of the splendid team only six were left, thirty-eight having perished.

At last, toward the end of February, a faint glimmer of sunlight began to silver the ice between the headlands of the bay. Out turned Captain Kane and out turned the crew to welcome it back.

"The sunshine reached our deck on the last day of February; we needed it to cheer us," wrote Kane.

Yet he would not turn homewards. He felt his work was unfinished; he must push on farther to the north. On the twentieth of March a small party of pale-faced men was sent off with sledges and provisions to establish a chain of camps along the northern coast of Greenland. Dressed in their skins, they must have looked somewhat like a troop of bears on their hind legs.

Suddenly one night—it was nearly twelve o'clock, and Kane was making up garments of skins—the noise of footsteps startled them, and the next minute three half-dying men entered the cabin. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to speak. Their story was a terrible one. They had left their comrades in the ice, risking their own lives to bring news. Four of them were lying frozen and disabled, they could not say where, somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east. "Irish Toni" had stayed behind to watch them. This was all they could remember.

There was only one course open—a rescue party must start at once without delay, and one of the three men must be taken to show the way.

"Little Willie" was soon rigged out with a buffalo cover. The least tired of the three men was wrapped in a fur bag, his legs rolled in dogskins and eider down, and strapped on to the sledge. Then nine men, headed by Kane, all wrapped in bearskins, harnessed themselves in and started off. The tired man strapped on to the sledge, who had not rested for fifty hours, fell asleep; no tracks were to be found. The wind set in sharply from the north-west, the thermometer fell; they must not stop for a moment, or they too would freeze.

The strongest of the party were seized with trembling fits; Kane himself fainted twice in the snow. They had been eighteen hours without food or water, when suddenly Hans thought he saw a broad sledge-track. They traced it on to the deep snow among the hummocks, till at last they saw a small American flag fluttering in the wind, and lower down was a banner hanging from a tent-pole scarcely showing above the drift. It was the camp of the disabled men, and they had reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.

The little tent was nearly covered. Kane crawled into the darkness. There lay the four poor fellows stretched helplessly on their backs, but not too far gone to break out into a burst of welcome, which more than repaid the man for his terrible journey.

"We knew you would come," they cried pathetically.

Each man was allowed two hours' sleep, while the others walked about to keep from freezing. Then came the homeward march. They sewed up the limbs of the sick men in reindeer skins and placed them on folded buffalo bags, lashing them on to the sledge. They were ready at last, and after standing round, while the commander repeated a short prayer, they started back on their weary march.