“…This humble commander gladly accepted, of course, command of the expedition aboard HMS Wisdom, in pursuit of the disappeared brig named Elephantine, lost to us anywhere North of the Manderly Strait.
An advance group spoke with a family of Christian Esqimaux in possession of a modest English, who freely discussed their experience trading with the party overwinter, regular English fare for seal skins and meat and bear skins and meat. The honourable and capable Lieutenant John Willow privately suggested, based on this news as well as the evidences previously expounded upon in this text, that the ‘Elephantine’ and her crew had separated at the Strait or somewhere North thereby, whereupon the party, making use of the skins amassed from the Esqimaux, attempted to travel inland on foot, taking ironic fortune in the season that allowed for pedestrian travel on the new ice. Though it was a theory pulling together a great many unknowns into a neat package, it remained, at that naive time, impossible to imagine any earthly motive for a reckless trek as that.
HMS Wisdom’s travels up to the big ice were pleasant and cheerful enough, no impediment borne from either savage or Dane or ice until such time as we were ill-met by an unexpected and persistent southernly wind. Forward progress slowed, then halted along the west shore of Cape Sir James Ross. I have overwintered at the location once before in 1863, and have written many words on the abundance of life in that area marked on the provided map. Where I had previously been met with countless varieties of seal, reindeer, gull and other manner of creature, this winter presented a queer and galling dearth of living organic matter on the Cape or beyond.
A party from HMS Wisdom, sent in search of local Esqimaux with whom we could trade, returned three days thence with nothing else but reports of dead and rotted seals [pagophilus groenlandicus] littering their way. The leader of the party, one enterprising Lieutenant John Simpson had retrieved one of the bulging corpses for study by William Shrapley, our natural philosopher and anatomist aboard Wisdom. He was unable to provide answers as to why the creature had begun rapid decomposition in consistent frigid temperatures. Furthermore, even with our combined efforts, we were unable to theorise the lack of life present, Esqimaux and otherwise.
I looked out onto the ice from the bow, with the refractor generously gifted by Lady Helena Black, and observed tirelessly as the buffeting winds rolled a dense and unforgiving fog across the white expanse until that time in the evening, when it appeared to me to sweep upwards into the heavens, pulling with it the mist and disclosing the base of a mountain range in the very far distance, or perhaps, hills in the middle distance…”
