The land was low near the coast, and it rose only about sixty feet at the distance of a mile from the sea.
The boiler of the Forward needed cleaning; the captain anchored his ship to a field of ice, and gave the doctor leave to go ashore with the boatswain. For himself, being indifferent to everything outside of his own plans, he shut himself up in his cabin, and studied the chart of the Pole.
The doctor and his companion easily reached land; the first-named carried a compass for his experiments; he wanted to test the work of James Ross; he easily made out the mound of stones erected by him; he ran towards it; an opening in the cairn let him see a tin box in which James Ross had placed an account of his discovery. No living being had visited this lonely spot for thirty years.
At this place a needle suspended as delicately as possible assumed a nearly vertical position under the magnetic influence; hence the centre of attraction was near, if not immediately beneath, the needle.
The doctor made the experiment with all care. But if James Ross, owing to the imperfection of his instruments, found a declination of only 89° 59′, the real magnetic point is found within a minute of this spot. Dr. Clawbonny was more fortunate, and at a little distance from there he found a declination of 90°.
“This is exactly the magnetic pole of the earth!” he cried, stamping on the ground.
“Just here?” asked Johnson.
“Precisely here, my friend!”
“Well, then,” resumed the boatswain, “we must give up all the stories of a magnetic mountain or large mass.”
“Yes, Johnson,” answered the doctor, laughing, “those are empty hypotheses! As you see, there is no mountain capable of attracting ships, of drawing their iron from them anchor after anchor, bolt after bolt! and your shoes here are as light as anywhere in the world.”
“But how do you explain—”
“There is no explanation, Johnson; we are not wise enough for that. But what is mathematically certain is that the magnetic pole is at this very spot!”
“Ah, Dr. Clawbonny, how glad the captain would be to say as much of the North Pole!”
“He’ll say it, Johnson; he’ll say it!”
“God grant it!” was the answer.
The doctor and his companion raised a cairn at the spot where they tried their experiment, and the signal for their return being made, they returned to the ship at five o’clock of the evening.
XVII
The Fate of Sir John Franklin
The Forward succeeded, though not without difficulty, in getting by James Ross Sound, by frequent use of the ice-saws and gunpowder; the crew was very much fatigued. Fortunately the temperature was agreeable, and even thirty degrees above what James Ross found at the same time of year. The thermometer marked 34°.
Saturday they doubled Cape Felix at the northern end of King William’s Land, one of the smaller islands of northern seas.
At that time the crew became very much depressed; they gazed wistfully and sadly at its far-stretching shores.
In fact, they were gazing at King William’s Land, the scene of one of the saddest tragedies of modern times! Only a few miles to the west the Erebus and Terror were lost.
The sailors of the Forward were familiar with the attempts made to find Franklin, and the result they had obtained, but they did not know all the sad details. Now, while the doctor was following on his chart the course of the ship, many of them, Bell, Bolton, and Simpson, drew near him and began to talk with him. Soon the others followed to satisfy their curiosity; meanwhile the brig was advancing rapidly, and the bays, capes, and promontories of the coast passed before their gaze like a gigantic panorama.
Hatteras was pacing nervously to and fro on the quarterdeck; the doctor found himself on the bridge, surrounded by the men of the crew; he readily understood the interest of the situation, and the impression that would be made by an account given under those circumstances, hence he resumed the talk he had begun with Johnson.
“You know, my friends, how Franklin began: like Cook and Nelson, he was first a cabin-boy; after spending his youth in long sea-voyages, he made up his mind, in 1845, to seek the Northwest Passage; he commanded the Erebus and the Terror, two stanch vessels, which had visited the antarctic seas in 1840, under the command of James Ross. The Erebus, in which Franklin sailed, carried a crew of seventy men, all told, with Fitz-James as captain; Gore and Le Vesconte, lieutenants; Des Voeux, Sargent, and Couch, boatswains; and Stanley, surgeon. The Terror carried sixty-eight men. Crozier was the captain; the lieutenants were Little, Hodgson, and Irving; boatswains, Horesby and Thomas; the surgeon, Peddie. In the names of the bays, capes, straits, promontories, channels, and islands of these latitudes you find memorials of most of these unlucky men, of whom not one has ever again seen his home! In all one hundred and thirty-eight men! We know that the last of Franklin’s letters were written from Disco Island, and dated July 12, 1845. He said, ‘I hope to set sail tonight for Lancaster Sound.’ What followed his departure from Disco Bay? The captains of the whalers, the Prince of Wales and the Enterprise, saw these two ships for the last time in Melville Bay, and nothing more was heard of them. Still we can follow Franklin in his course westward; he went through Lancaster and Barrow Sounds and reached Beechey Island, where he passed the winter of 1845–46.”
“But how is this known?” asked Bell, the carpenter.
“By three tombs which the Austin expedition found there in
