It was decided that the “Investigator” should be abandoned, and the “Intrepid” and “Resolute” made room for her men.  Glad greeting they gave them too, as British seamen can give.  More than half the crews were away when the “Investigator’s” parties came in, but by July everybody had returned.  They had found islands where the charts had guessed there was sea, and sea where they had guessed there was land; had changed peninsulas into islands and islands into peninsulas.  Away off beyond the seventy eighth parallel, Mr. McClintock had christened the farthest dot of land “Ireland’s Eye,” as if his native island were peering off into the unknown there;—­a great island, which will be our farthest now, for years to come, had been named “Prince Patrick’s Land,” in honor of the baby prince who was the youngest when they left home.  Will he not be tempted, when he is a man, to take a crew, like another Madoc, and, as younger sons of queens should, go and settle upon this tempting god-child?  They had heard from Sir Edward Belcher’s part of the squadron; they had heard from England; had heard of everything but Sir John Franklin.  They had even found an ale-bottle of Captain Collinson’s expedition,—­but not a stick nor straw to show where Franklin or his men had lived or died.  Two officers of the “Investigator” were sent home to England this summer by a ship from Beechey Island, the head-quarters; and thus we heard, in October, 1853, of the discovery of the Northwest Passage.

After their crews were on board again, and the “Investigator’s” sixty stowed away also, the “Resolute” and “Intrepid” had a dreary summer of it.  The ice would not break up.  They had hunting-parties on shore and races on the floe; but the captain could not send the “Investigators” home as he wanted to, in his steam tender.  All his plans were made, and made on a manly scale,—­if only the ice would open.  He built a storehouse on the island for Collinson’s people, or for you, reader, and us, if we should happen there, and stored it well, and left this record:—­

    “This is a house which I have named the ‘Sailor’s Home,’ under the
    especial patronage of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.

    “Here royal sailors and marines are fed, clothed, and receive
    double pay for inhabiting it.”

In that house is a little of everything, and a good deal of victuals and drink; but nobody has been there since the last of the “Resolute’s” men came away.

At last, the 17th of August, a day of foot-racing and jumping in bags and wrestling, all hands present, as at a sort of “Isthmian games,” ended with a gale, a cracking up of ice, and the “Investigators” thought they were on their way home, and Kellett thought he was to have a month of summer yet.  But no; “there is nothing certain in this navigation from one hour to the next.”  The “Resolute” and “Intrepid” were never really free of ice all that autumn; drove and drifted to and fro