[Illustration:  ADRIFT ON AN ICE-FLOE]

We must pass hastily to the sequel of this seemingly irreparable disaster.  The “Polaris” was beached, winter quarters established, and those who had clung to the ship spent the winter building boats, in which, the following spring, they made their way southward until picked up by a whaler.  Those on the floe drifted at the mercy of the wind and tide 195 days, making over 1300 miles to the southward.  As the more temperate latitudes were reached, and the warmer days of spring came on, the floe began going to pieces, and they were continually confronted with the probability of being forced to their boat for safety—­one boat, built to hold eight, and now the sole reliance of nineteen people.  It is hard to picture through the imagination the awful strain that day and night rested upon the minds of these hapless castaways.  Never could they drop off to sleep except in dread that during the night the ice on which they slept, might split, even under their very pallets, and they be awakened by the deathly plunge into the icy water.  Day and night they were startled and affrighted by the thunderous rumblings and cracking of the breaking floe—­a sound that an experienced Arctic explorer says is the most terrifying ever heard by man, having in it something of the hoarse rumble of heavy artillery, the sharp and murderous crackle of machine guns, and a kind of titanic grinding, for which there is no counterpart in the world of tumult.  Living thus in constant dread of death, the little company drifted on, seemingly miraculously preserved.  Their floe was at last reduced from a great sheet of ice, perhaps a mile or more square, to a scant ten yards by seventy-five, and this rapidly breaking up.  In two days four whalers passed near enough for them to see, yet failed to see them, but finally their frantic signals attracted attention, and they were picked up—­not only the original nineteen who had begun the drift six months earlier, but one new and helpless passenger, for one of the Esquimau women had given birth to a child while on the ice.

The next notable Arctic expedition from the United States had its beginning in journalistic enterprise.  Mr. James Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York Herald, who had already manifested his interest in geographical work by sending Henry M. Stanley to find Livingston in the heart of the Dark Continent, fitted out the steam yacht “Pandora,” which had already been used in Arctic service, and placed her at the disposal of Lieutenant DeLong, U.S.N., for an Arctic voyage.  The name of the ship was changed to “Jeannette,” and control of the expedition was vested in the United States Government, though Mr. Bennett’s generosity defrayed all charges.  The vessel was manned from the navy, and Engineer Melville, destined to bear a name great among Arctic men, together with two navy lieutenants, were assigned to her.  The voyage planned was then unique among American Arctic expeditions, for instead