For the return journey: "The sick, with their limbs sewed up carefully in reindeer-skins, were placed upon the bed of buffalo-robes, in a half-reclining posture; other skins and blankets were thrown above them, and the whole litter was lashed together so as to allow but a single opening opposite the mouth for breathing. This necessary work cost us a great deal of effort, but it was essential to the lives of the sufferers. After repeating a short prayer we set out on our retreat."
The journey homeward was made under conditions of almost insuperable difficulty and distress in which lack of sleep played a greater part than either cold or physical labor, severe as they both were. As the energy of the sledgemen failed the tent of the field party was pitched, and McGary left with orders to move forward after a sleep of four hours.
Not sparing himself, Kane went on with one man and reached the half-way tent, to melt ice and pemmican, in time to save its destruction by a predatory polar bear. He says: "The tent was uninjured though the bear had overturned it, tossing the buffalo-robes and pemmican into the snow. All we recollect is that we had great difficulty in raising the tent. We crept into our reindeer-bags without speaking, and for the next three hours slept on in a dreamy but intense slumber. When I awoke my long beard was a mass of ice, frozen fast to the buffalo-skin; Godfrey had to cut me out with his jack-knife."
A few hours later the crippled party rejoined Kane and after refreshment went on toward the ship. Fortunately the weather was fine and the cold less severe. Yet, says Kane, "Our halts multiplied, and we fell, half-sleeping, in the snow. Strange to say, it refreshed us. I ventured on the experiment, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes. I felt so much benefited that I timed the men in the same way. They sat on the runners of the sledge, fell asleep instantly, and were forced to wakefulness when their three minutes were out."
In an utterly exhausted, half-delirious condition, they were met a few miles from the brig by a dog-sledge bringing restoratives. Of the outcome of the sledge journey out and back Kane says: "Ohlsen suffered some time from strabismus and blindness; two others underwent amputation of parts of the foot without unpleasant consequences; and two died in spite of all our efforts.
"The rescue party had been out for seventy-two hours. We had halted in all eight hours, half of our number sleeping at a time. We travelled between eighty and ninety miles, most of the way dragging a heavy sledge. The mean temperature of the whole time was seventy-three degrees below freezing, including the warmest hours of the three days. We had no water except at our two halts, and were at no time able to intermit vigorous exercise without freezing."
Such remarkable and successful efforts to rescue their suffering shipmates cannot fail to excite the admiration of all, if merely as an astonishing instance of man's physical endurance. Yet on the whole such feelings are subordinate in the hearts of most men to a sense of reverence for the spirit that animated Kane and his fellows to sacrifice their personal comfort and venture their lives for the relief and safety of their disabled comrades.
HOW WOON WON PROMOTION
"Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
A heart with English instinct fraught,
He only knows that not through him
Shall England come to shame."
—Doyle.