The account they gave us of Mr. Fife and his two companions led us to believe that we should find them, if still living, at a considerable distance to the westward; and some parties were just about to set out in that direction, when the trouble and anxiety which this mistake would have occasioned us were prevented by the arrival of another of the searching parties, with the information that Mr. Fife and the two men were on their way to the ships, being about five miles to the eastward.  Some fresh hands were, immediately sent to bring them in, and they arrived on board at ten P.M. after an absence of ninety-one hours, and having been exposed during three nights to the inclemency of the first wintry weather we had experienced.  Almost the whole of this party were much exhausted by cold and fatigue, and several of them were severely frostbitten in their toes and fingers; but, by the skill and unremitted attention of our medical gentlemen, they were in a few days enabled to return to their duty.

At three A.M. of Tuesday, the 14th, the thermometer fell to 9 deg.; and from this time the commencement of winter may fairly be dated.  On the 20th I considered it a duty incumbent upon me to call for the opinions of the senior officers of the expedition as to the expediency of immediately seeking a harbour in which the ships might securely lie during the ensuing winter.  The opinions of the officers entirely concurring with my own as to the propriety of immediately resorting to this measure, I determined, whenever the ice and the weather would allow, to run back to the bay of the Hecla and Griper, in which neighbourhood alone we had any reason to believe that a suitable harbour might be found.

At half past two on the morning of the 22d, the night signal was made to weigh, and we began to heave at our cables; but such was the difficulty of raising our anchor and of hauling in our hawsers, owing to the stiffness of the ropes from frost and the quantity of ice which had accumulated about them, that it was five o’clock before the ships were under way.  Our rudder, also, was so choked by the ice which had formed about it, that it could not be moved till a boat had been hauled under the stern, and the ice beaten and cut away from it.  We ran along to the eastward without any obstruction, in a channel about five miles wide, till we were within four or five miles of Cape Hearne, where the bay-ice, in unbroken sheets of about one third of an inch in thickness, began to offer considerable impediment to our progress.  We at length, however, struck soundings with twenty-nine fathoms of line, and at eight P.M. anchored in nine fathoms, on a muddy bottom, a little to the eastward of our situation on the 5th.