Chap­ter IX unfolds in May 1859, as Cap­tain Leopold McClintock’s expe­di­tion, which had endured eight months of entrap­ment by the ice in Bel­lot Strait, final­ly sees the harsh win­ter come to an end. With the return of the sun, McClin­tock and his crew, already weak­ened by frost­bite and scurvy, pre­pare to ven­ture south across King William Land. Led by Lieu­tenant Hob­son, they begin the ardu­ous jour­ney, with the des­per­ate need to find sup­plies and ensure their sur­vival weigh­ing heav­i­ly on them. Along the way, the crew encoun­ters local Esquimaux who recount a chill­ing and har­row­ing tale of a group of thir­ty starv­ing white men. These men, they believe, are the last rem­nants of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fat­ed expe­di­tion, which had set out in July 1845 in an effort to dis­cov­er the North­west Pas­sage, only for the entire crew to dis­ap­pear mys­te­ri­ous­ly, nev­er to be found.

The Esquimaux’s account is unset­tling, hint­ing at grim dis­cov­er­ies of can­ni­bal­ism and the trag­ic cir­cum­stances the expe­di­tion’s sur­vivors faced. They describe find­ing dis­mem­bered bod­ies at camp­sites and boots filled with human flesh, giv­ing a chill­ing insight into the lengths to which the men had gone in their strug­gle to sur­vive. In one par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing moment, Hob­son con­tem­plates his own fate as he reflects on the bru­tal extremes to which des­per­a­tion can dri­ve a per­son when pushed to the edge. The chill­ing real­iza­tion begins to dawn on him that the same fate that befell Franklin’s men could eas­i­ly befall him and his crew if they aren’t care­ful. This macabre nar­ra­tive adds to the ten­sion and fear, as the crew press­es on, each step clos­er to the edge of their own sur­vival, and Hob­son becomes con­sumed by the thought of the inevitable dan­gers that lie ahead.

Upon reach­ing Cape Felix, Hob­son and his crew make a grim dis­cov­ery: the rem­nants of a camp that had been hasti­ly aban­doned. This camp, which had once been occu­pied, con­tains tents draped in bearskins and valu­able sci­en­tif­ic equip­ment, all like­ly left behind in the rush to escape. The aban­doned site appears to have been more than just a tem­po­rary refuge; it was once a well-estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­to­ry, fur­ther evi­dence of the crew’s once-thriv­ing efforts. This dis­cov­ery paints a stark pic­ture of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the expedition’s final days, sug­gest­ing that the crew’s depar­ture was not due to ordi­nary con­di­tions, but rather forced by an extreme sit­u­a­tion that left them with no oth­er choice but to aban­don their work and flee. Hob­son con­tin­ues south­ward, his sense of urgency grow­ing as he uncov­ers a cairn that holds an even more sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­ery: the only known com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Franklin’s expedition—a pair of notes writ­ten on Admi­ral­ty notepa­per.

The first note, found amidst the cairn’s con­tents, reveals the ini­tial opti­mism of the expe­di­tion’s crew. The mes­sage sug­gests that the crew had spent the win­ter of 1846–1847 at Beechey Island under Franklin’s lead­er­ship, still hope­ful about their mis­sion. This note is a stark con­trast to the lat­er, more somber com­mu­ni­ca­tion, reflect­ing the hope and con­fi­dence they once had before the tri­als of the jour­ney took their toll. How­ev­er, the sec­ond note reveals a far grim­mer real­i­ty. It describes how, by April 1848, after endur­ing two harsh win­ters, Franklin’s expe­di­tion had been aban­doned in a des­per­ate attempt to save what remained of the crew. The note reveals that Franklin died in June 1847, and by that time, nine offi­cers and fif­teen men had already per­ished. The note also men­tions the death of Lieu­tenant Gra­ham Gore, who died before the crew could attempt any over­land escape. The trag­ic fate of the remain­ing men is left uncer­tain, as the sea claimed them one by one, and their sto­ry fad­ed into his­to­ry, engulfed by the cold and unfor­giv­ing waters that had swal­lowed their lives.

These rev­e­la­tions leave Hob­son and his crew grap­pling with the hor­ror of what they have dis­cov­ered. The trag­ic end of Franklin’s expe­di­tion serves as a somber reminder of the harsh­ness of their envi­ron­ment and the ulti­mate cost of ambi­tion and explo­ration. The rem­nants of Franklin’s ill-fat­ed crew, left to rot in the icy wilder­ness, stand as a tes­ta­ment to the fragili­ty of human life in the face of nature’s unyield­ing forces. As Hob­son con­tem­plates the dev­as­ta­tion, the sense of loss and hope­less­ness grows, mak­ing it clear that while they may sur­vive their jour­ney, they will nev­er escape the shad­ows of the past. The weight of his­to­ry, inter­twined with the cold, haunt­ing rem­nants of the past, will con­tin­ue to linger as they move for­ward in search of answers, uncer­tain about what else they might uncov­er along the way.