his hand on a box of lucifers, struck a light, and revealed—­books scattered in confusion, a candle standing, which he lighted at once, the glasses and the decanters from which Kellett and his officers had drunk good by to the vessel.  The whalemen filled them again, and undoubtedly felt less discouraged.  Meanwhile night came on, and a gale arose.  So hard did it blow, that for two days these four were the whole crew of the “Resolute,” and it was not till the 19th of September that they returned to their own ship, and reported what their prize was.

All these ten days, since Captain Buddington had first seen her, the vessels had been nearing each other.  On the 19th he boarded her himself; found that in her hold, on the larboard side, was a good deal of ice; on the starboard side there seemed to be water.  In fact, her tanks had burst from the extreme cold; and she was full of water, nearly to her lower deck.  Everything that could move from its place had moved; everything was wet; everything that would mould was mouldy.  “A sort of perspiration” settled on the beams above.  Clothes were wringing wet.  The captain’s party made a fire in Captain Kellett’s stove, and soon started a sort of shower from the vapor with which it filled the air.  The “Resolute” has, however, four fine force-pumps.  For three days the captain and six men worked fourteen hours a day on one of these, and had the pleasure of finding that they freed her of water,—­that she was tight still.  They cut away upon the masses of ice; and on the 23d of September, in the evening, she freed herself from her encumbrances, and took an even keel.  This was off the west shore of Baffin’s Bay, in latitude 67 deg..  On the shortest tack she was twelve hundred miles from where Captain Kellett left her.

There was work enough still to be done.  The rudder was to be shipped, the rigging to be made taut, sail to be set; and it proved, by the way, that the sail on the yards was much of it still serviceable, while a suit of new linen sails below were greatly injured by moisture.  In a week more they had her ready to make sail.  The pack of ice still drifted with both ships; but on the 21st of October, after a long northwest gale, the “Resolute” was free,—­more free than she had been for more than two years.

Her “last voyage” is almost told.  Captain Buddington had resolved to bring her home.  He had picked ten men from the “George Henry,” leaving her fifteen, and with a rough tracing of the American coast drawn on a sheet of foolscap, with his lever watch and a quadrant for his instruments, he squared off for New London.  A rough, hard passage they had of it.  The ship’s ballast was gone, by the bursting of the tanks; she was top-heavy and under manned.  He spoke a British whaling bark, and by her sent to Captain Kellett his epaulettes, and to his own owners news that he was coming.  They had heavy gales and head winds, were driven as far down as the Bermudas; the water left in the ship’s