werful madman. The three set out for Fort Enterprise, Michel
carrying a loaded gun, two {103} pistols and a bayonet, muttering to
himself and evidently meditating a new crime. Richardson, a man of
iron nerve, forestalled him. Watching his opportunity, he put a pistol
to the Indian's head and blew his brains out.

Richardson and Hepburn dragged themselves forward mile by mile,
encouraged by the thought of the blazing fires and the abundant food
that they expected to find at Fort Enterprise. They reached the fort
just in the dusk of an October evening. All about it was silence.
There were no tracks in the newly fallen snow. Only a thin thread of
smoke from the chimney gave a sign of life. Hurriedly they made their
way in. To their horror and dismay they found Franklin and three
companions, two Canadians and an Indian, stretched out in the last
stages of famine. 'No words can convey an idea,' wrote Dr Richardson
later on, 'of the filth and wretchedness that met our eyes on looking
around. Our own misery had stolen upon us by degrees and we were
accustomed to the contemplation of each other's emaciated figures, but
the ghastly countenances, dilated eye-balls, and sepulchral voices of
Captain Franklin and those with him were more than we could bear.'
Franklin, on his part, was equally dismayed at the appearance of
Richardson and Hepburn. {104} 'We were all shocked,' he says in his
journal, 'at beholding the emaciated countenances of the doctor and
Hepburn, as they strongly evidenced their extremely debilitated state.
The alteration in our appearance was equally distressing to them, for
since the swellings had subsided we were little more than skin and
bone. The doctor particularly remarked the sepulchral tone of our
voices, which he requested us to make more cheerful if possible,
unconscious that his own partook of the same key.'

Franklin related to the new-comers how he and his followers had reached
Fort Enterprise, and to their infinite disappointment and grief had
found it perfectly desolate. There was no depot of provisions, as had
been arranged, nor any trace of a letter or other message from the
traders at Fort Providence or from the Indians. Lieutenant Back, who
had reached the fort a little in advance of Franklin, had gone on in
the hope of finding Indian hunters, or perhaps of reaching Fort
Providence and sending relief. They had no food except a little _tripe
de roche_, and Franklin had thus found