teras would not inform his crew of their situation, for if they
had known that they had been dragged farther north they would very
likely have given themselves up to the madness of despair. The captain
had hidden his own emotions at his discovery. It was his first happy
moment during the long months passed in struggling with the elements.
He was a hundred and fifty miles farther north, scarcely eight degrees
from the Pole! But he hid his delight so profoundly that even the
doctor did not suspect it; he wondered at seeing an unwonted
brilliancy in the captain's eyes; but that was all, and he never once
thought of the reason.

The _Forward_, by getting nearer the Pole, had got farther away from
the coal repository observed by Sir Edward Belcher; instead of one
hundred, it lay at two hundred and fifty miles farther south. However,
after a short discussion about it between Hatteras and Clawbonny,
the journey was persisted in. If Belcher had written the truth--and
there was no reason for doubting his veracity--they should find things
exactly in the same state as he had left them, for no new expedition
had gone to these extreme continents since 1853. There were few or
no Esquimaux to be met with in that latitude. They could not be
disappointed on the coast of New Cornwall as they had been on Beechey
Island. The low temperature preserves the objects abandoned to its
influence for any length of time. All probabilities were therefore
in favour of this excursion across the ice. It was calculated that
the expedition would take, at the most, forty days, and Johnson's
preparations were made in consequence.

The sledge was his first care; it was in the Greenland style,
thirty-five inches wide and twenty-four feet long. The Esquimaux
often make them more than fifty feet long. This one was made of long
planks, bent up front and back, and kept bent like a bow by two thick
cords; the form thus given to it gave it increased resistance to
shocks; it ran easily on the ice, but when the snow was soft on the
ground it was put upon a frame; to make it glide more easily it was
rubbed, Esquimaux fashion, with sulphur and snow. Six dogs drew it;
notwithstanding their leanness these animals did not appear to suffer
from the cold; their buckskin harness was in good condition, and they
could draw a weight of two thousand pounds without fatigue. The
materials for encampment consisted of a tent, should the construction
of a snow-house be impossible,