“Captain! I shoot two reindeer!” and in staggered the snow-covered hunter bearing on his back the hind quarter of a doe.
“Well done, Alexey!” shouted the captain, leaping to his feet and kissing the startled Indian while all about men sprang up, almost smothering the beaming Alexey in handclasps and in clumsy hugs. Immediately sleep was forgotten, the fires poked up, and that haunch of venison, cut in chunks, was roasting on a dozen sticks. Each man got a pound and a half; most of them, long before their meat was hardly more than seared before the fire, were gorging themselves on the raw flesh! With startling rapidity, it disappeared and hungrily his men looked toward the bloody remnant of that haunch, but De Long, stowing it behind him in the hut, shook his head and ended the feast, leaving the party no option but to return to sleep, while only Snoozer, still gnawing wolfishly at the shank bone, remained awake.
That changed De Long’s plans. Issuing only a very scanty ration of pemmican for breakfast, he sent Alexey and six men out in the morning to get the deer, while he concluded to spend that day and the next in the hut, recuperating the sick, and then with his two days’ supply of pemmican still intact and the remainder of the two does for food on the journey, push on southward with all hands.
And so they did. Warmed by soup made of the reindeer bones, fortified by deer meat, and rested by two days’ inaction in the hut, the party set out hopefully on September 24th with twenty pounds of pemmican and fifty-four pounds of venison still left for food for fourteen men and their dog, leaving a note and the captain’s Winchester rifle (for which there was no longer any ammunition) as a record behind them.
They tramped along the east bank of the river for three miles, resting hourly and making poor progress. Looking hopelessly at the broad stream still flowing unfrozen past him, De Long sighed for his abandoned cutter, in which here with oars and sail, they might make fine progress even against the current. But the cutter was gone and wishes would do no good. However, they might perhaps make a raft and sail or pole that upstream, at least relieving their feet. So stopping the party, De Long turned all hands to gathering logs out of which, using the sledge lashing for a fastening, a crude raft was finally fashioned at the cost of eight hours’ strenuous toil, on which at five p.m. they attempted to embark. But the river had ebbed meanwhile, and in spite of an hour’s battle, it was impossible to get the grounded side of the raft afloat. In deep disgust, amid the suppressed curses of all hands at the result (and especially of Nindemann who had done most of the work), the raft was abandoned, the loads picked up again, and the men, doubly weary now, staggered away southward, again to camp for the night on the open tundra, freezing on a few logs spread in the snow for a bed, to rise next morning after no sleep at all, stiffer and sorer even than the night before.
The next day’s traveling was difficult beyond words, over snow and thin ice through which torn boots broke, to come up covered with a slushy mixture which immediately froze solid, soon making each man’s feet as large and as heavy as sandbags, a gruelling task to lift them, an endless labor to keep them reasonably cleared.
By some miscalculation either in issue or in original weighing, but eight pounds of deer meat was found remaining, all of which went for dinner. An afternoon of heartbreaking travel over an ice-coated bluff from which the piercing wind had cleared all snow, leaving it slippery as glass, brought them at night to a dilapidated hut, filthy in its interior, but nevertheless the freezing seamen, taking it for a godsend, stretched themselves promptly in the dirt inside, unutterably grateful for the shelter. A scant portion of pemmican passed for supper. With only three similar rations apiece left as the total food supply, the toil-worn men turned in, grumbling audibly for the immediate issue of the remnant of the pemmican and De Long began to fear open rebellion.
Day broke inauspiciously. Before them, blocking the way, was a swift side stream, too deep to ford, with ice too thin to walk upon. De Long, after examining all possibilities of crossing, ordered Nindemann to build a raft to ferry over on, and Nindemann, tired, hungry and bitter over the fiasco attending the raft of a few days before, went grumblingly at it. While he and his shipmates struggled with the logs and the single line they had for a lashing, De Long silently ignoring the none too well hidden signs of growing disaffection went back to the hut. Outside the door, Ambler met him, pulled him aside,
“Erichsen’s condition is getting desperate, captain. Both feet are worse; another couple of days and nothing in God’s world can keep him on them.”
“All right, doctor. We’ll do the best we can,” said De Long resolutely. “Keep him going to the last minute, then we’ll drag him. Meanwhile, I’d better keep an eye on the work on that raft.”