“After refreshing ourselves with a warm supper, and nodding for a few hours over the fire, we set out about 11 P.M. on our return to our encampment, which we reached by 2 A.M. of the following morning. Our return from this point to the ship, which we reached about 5 P.M. of Saturday the 10th, was not marked by any incident worthy of notice.
“We had deposited at our encampment a 90-pound case of pemmican, a bag of coals, two muskets, and some ammunition, which, while it served as a reserve for future explorations in this direction, materially lightened the labour of the dogs, and allowed us time for a more minute examination of the coast than we had been able to make during the outward journey. The result, however, was not in any respect more successful. No traces of any kind were discovered which could throw light on the objects of our search.
“Thus ended our first journey to Fury Beach, and its results satisfied us that, in the present state of the ice in Prince Regent’s Inlet, the more extended explorations of the coastline, which we had calculated on being able to commence on our return to the ship, could not now be safely undertaken, and must for the present be postponed. We were most reluctantly compelled, therefore, to pass the next month in the ship, occupied in the same general routine duties as those on which we had been during the earlier part of the winter.”
Captain Kennedy gives a vivid description of Arctic gales and the dangers of travel during a tempest. “About eight A.M. in the morning of the 13th February,” he writes, “Mr. Bellot, the carpenter, Andrew Irvine, Henry Anderson (the first mate), and myself left the ship, taking with us two cases of pemmican, and three tin jars, each containing two gallons of spirits of wine, on a sledge, drawn by five Eskimo dogs, for the purpose of depositing them a short distance on the way to Fury Beach, and returning in the evening. After proceeding for a few hours, and making very fair progress along a tolerably good path, a strong wind arose, which by one P.M. had increased to a perfect hurricane, so thickly charged with snow that, in attempting to cross a bay on our return, we lost sight of the land by which our course homeward had been guided. In short, after wandering about for some time, scarcely able to distinguish each other at the distance of a few paces, we found that we had fairly lost our way. In this dilemma, we set two of the five dogs loose from the sledge, in the hope that they would act as guides better than when drawing; but this proved to be a mistake, as they would not leave the others. At last, however, they all set off together, taking the sledge with them and leaving us to our fate. As we afterwards found, they reached the ship without any difficulty, and, as may readily be supposed, put every one on board in a perfect fever of terror and anxiety as to what had become of us. In the meantime, we had gone on floundering over broken ice, until we had once more stumbled on the land, but where or what the land was we had fallen upon, nobody knew. It was something certainly to know we were not marching over the Inlet or out to sea, in which case we would have marched on, and in all probability never returned; but in other respects we had rather lost than gained by getting on terra firma. With an atmosphere as thick as pea-soup, and no sun, moon, or stars to be seen, there was no keeping the shore (and to go on one side or the other was to incur the certainty of losing ourselves again, either on the Inlet or on the land) without hugging close up and into a break-neck line of stranded fragments of ice, which indicated the direction of the beach.