Able Seaman Charles Anderson was a man of powerful build and great muscular strength, who had made himself a leader among the seamen by his success in athletic sports, in which he easily excelled any other man on the ship. A Canadian by birth, his color and his personality disclosed in his veins deep strains of Indian or other alien blood. Inured to the hardships and labors of a hunter's life in the Hudson Bay territory, where he claimed to have been an employee, he displayed in his social relations the mercurial and attractive qualities which distinguish the French half-breeds, the famous coureurs de bois.
At the evening meal there was more or less chaffing between the marines and the seamen as to where were Woon and Anderson and what success they were having in the field. With a trace of that special pride of corps which goes so far to make the various arms of the military services so efficient, the seamen said that it was a pity that the absent men were not together so that Woon's safety might be better assured by the skill and strength of his friend Anderson. To these jests the royal marines answered, as was their wont, in kind, enlarging ludicrously by side remarks and flings on the reputed helplessness of sailors on land, especially on deer-back.
At eight o'clock that night affairs took a different turn, when it was known that M'Clure and the other officers felt serious alarm over the continued absence of two hunters who were said to be in the field apart. The fog had given place to a bright sky, with feeble light and rapidly falling temperature, so that disaster to one or both was thought to be probable. The presence and boldness of the prowling bands of ravenous wolves in the immediate neighborhood of the ship was viewed as one of the greatest dangers to a single disabled man.
To show the location of the ship and to guide the absentees to it in the darkness of the night, a mortar was first fired to attract the notice of the hunters, and then every ten or fifteen minutes a rocket was sent up, but with the closest attention no one could detect any sound that at all resembled a human voice. Nothing could be heard save now and then the ominous howling of wolves, doleful sounds to the anxious crew.
After two disquieting hours of signals by mortar and rockets, with no responsive answers from the hunters, Captain M'Clure sent out three search-parties, each headed by an officer. Arranging a code of signals, both for recall to and for assistance from the ship, they set forth on an agreed plan in different directions, each party provided with rockets, blue light, food, wraps, and stimulants. In less than a quarter of an hour one of the searching-parties met Sergeant Woon coming to the ship for help. Summoning another squad to join them, they hastened under the direction of Sergeant Woon to the relief of Anderson, who was perishing of cold in a snow-drift a scant mile distant.
It appears that Anderson, discovering a herd of deer, had pursued and wounded one of them, which fled inland away from the ship. Following fast after the wounded animal, without noting the winding direction of the trail, he at length not only lost the tracks of the deer but also found that the country was being covered by a light fog. Climbing the nearest hill-top, he was panic-stricken to find himself unable to note either the face of the bright southern sky, the hunters' usual method of finding their bearings, or to see any landmark that was at all familiar. He hurried from hill-top to hill-top, exhausting his strength, confusing his mind, and destroying his faith in his ability to find his homeward way. In utter despair he sat down in the snow and gave himself up for lost.
Most fortunately Sergeant Woon had seen no game, and chancing to cross the trail of Anderson and of the escaping deer, he decided to follow it up and help the sailor bring in his game. With extreme astonishment he found Anderson in a state of utter helplessness, already benumbed and certain soon to perish either from wolves or by freezing. Cold, fear, and fatigue had caused the seaman to lose not alone his power of action and of decision, but had almost deprived him of the faculty of speech. He was in such a demoralized condition—half-delirious, frightened, fatigued, and frosted—that he could not at first fully realize that his comrade had come to his assistance and that his ultimate safety was quite assured.
His utter prostration was only known when Woon asked him to get up and go home, to which he feebly moaned out, "I am lost," and did not rise even when the sergeant curtly said: "Get up like a man and you are all right." Some time passed before either words of cheer or sharp words of order and abuse had any effect. His patience worn out at last, Woon seized him roughly, dragged him to his feet, gave him a shove shipward, and started him on the home trail, but in a few minutes the bewildered seaman fell down in the deep snow through which he was walking. Not only was his strength worn out to exhaustion, but to the intense horror of Woon he was no sooner put on his feet than he fell down in a convulsive fit, while blood gushed freely from his mouth and nostrils.
The appalling conditions would have shaken any man less courageous than this heroic sergeant. They were many miles from the Investigator, the weather was turning cold with the vanishing fog, and the feeble twilight—it was now about two o'clock in the afternoon—was giving way to coming darkness. If he went to the ship for aid, Anderson would surely perish before it could be obtained. In the hours of travel to and fro the seaman would either freeze solidly or meet a horrible alternative fate from the not-far-distant wolves, whose dismal howlings already seemed a funeral dirge to their helpless prey.
The audacity and strength of these starving, ravenous animals had been a constant source of anxiety and alarm to all the hunters. Especially had the forecastle talk run on one gigantic brute, standing nearly four feet high at the shoulder, leaving a foot-print as big as that of a reindeer, who was thought to be the recognized leader of a marauding band from whose ravages no slaughtered game was free.