Dressed again, and with a tiny portion of pemmican and some hot tea for supper, the exhausted travelers threw themselves on the dirt floor, at last to catch some sleep inside a human habitation, primitive even though it was. No one any longer had a sleeping bag; only the patched and ragged remnants of the fur and cloth garments and the long since worn-out boots in which three months before they had started the terrible journey over the ice from the sunken Jeannette remained to them. But at least there was a tight roof and solid walls about them and it was enough. In a few minutes, at four o’clock in the afternoon, thankful beyond description for so much shelter, all hands were sound asleep.
But there was one exception. Shelter or no shelter, Erichsen, suffering the agonies of the damned from his mortifying feet, only tossed and moaned, waking the doctor. Rousing Nindemann to help him, the surgeon seated the suffering seaman on a log before the fire, got his instruments and medicines, and then, while Nindemann held the patient erect on the log, gently proceeded to unbandage his left foot, the worst one.
As the last turn of the bandage came off, Nindemann anxiously watching, saw to his horror, all the flesh, dead and putrid, drop away from the ball of the foot, exposing tendons and bones. Startled, he closed his eyes, repressed a groan. But Ambler said nothing; only the slight compression of his lips indicated his despair. There was nothing medical skill could do. Quietly smearing a fresh bandage with vaseline, he carefully bound up the foot again and put back Erichsen’s stocking and his boot.
“All done, Erichsen,” he said reassuringly; “you can turn in now,” and gathering up his equipment, Ambler, his heart torn by poor Erichsen’s condition, hurriedly stretched himself out in the hut as far away as he could get lest his patient should start to question him.
But Erichsen was not wholly ignorant of what had happened. Turning to Nindemann on the log beside him, he asked,
“Do you know much about frostbites?”
“Yah, Hans,” replied Nindemann, “at the first coming on, the flesh turns blue and then it gets black.”
The big Dane nodded, continued sadly,
“Ven doc took off the bandage, Ay saw somet’ing drop from unter my foot. You saw it too, Nindemann. Yah?”
Nindemann, with one arm about his suffering shipmate to keep him erect, looked him squarely in the eye, and putting all the conviction into his voice that he could muster, he lied heroically,