nd a scrap."

"Don't let us lose any time, then," answered Johnson; "food and wood
is what we need at once."

"Well, let us each take a side," answered the doctor, "so as to cover
the whole ground; let us begin at the centre and go out to the
circumference."

They went at once to the bed of ice where the _Forward_ had lain; each
examined with care all the fragments of the ship beneath the dim light
of the moon. It was a genuine hunt; the doctor entered into this
occupation with all the zest, not to say the pleasure, of a sportsman,
and his heart beat high when he discovered a chest almost intact; but
most were empty, and their fragments were scattered everywhere.

The violence of the explosion had been considerable; many things were
but dust and ashes; the large pieces of the engine lay here and there,
twisted out of shape; the broken flanges of the screw were hurled
twenty fathoms from the ship and buried deeply in the hardened snow;
the bent cylinders had been torn from their pivots; the chimney, torn
nearly in two, and with chains still hanging to it, lay half hid under
a large cake of ice; the bolts, bars, the iron-work of the helm, the
sheathing, all the metal-work of the ship, lay about as if it had been
fired from a gun.

[Illustration: "The large pieces of the engine lay here and there,
twisted out of shape."]

But this iron, which would have made the fortune of a tribe of
Esquimaux, was of no use under the circumstances; before anything else
food had to be found, and the doctor did not discover a great deal.

"That's bad," he said to himself; "it is evident that the store-room,
which was near the magazine, was entirely destroyed by the explosion;
what wasn't burned was shattered to dust. It's serious; and if Johnson
is not luckier than I am, I don't see what's going to become of us."

Still, as he enlarged his circles, the doctor managed to collect a few
fragments of pemmican, about fifteen pounds, and four stone bottles,
which had been thrown out upon the snow and so had escaped
destruction; they held five or six pints of brandy.

Farther on he picked up two packets of grains of cochlearia, which
would well make up for the loss of their lime-juice, which is so
useful against the scurvy.

Two hours later the doctor and Johnson met. They told one another of
their discoveries; unfortunately they had found but little to eat:
some few pieces of salt pork, fifty pounds of pemmican, three sacks of
biscui