"'It was a continuous jumble of dogs, sleds, men and ice—particularly ice—and it would be hard to tell which suffered most, men or dogs. Once in helping the sled over a bad place, I was thrown nearly nine feet down a slide, landing on the back of my head with the sled on me. Our sleds were racked and broken, our dogs played out and we ourselves scarce able to move when we finally reached Mr. Lopp's house at the Cape.'"
"Glorious!" cried Eric, his eyes shining; "they won through!"
"Yes, they got through all right," the whaler answered. "They still had a terrible journey ahead of them, but success was sure. Two or three days later Dr. Call reported with Artisarlook's herd. Lopp, of course, was an expert in handling deer an', besides, knew the country well. With sleds and over four hundred reindeer, equipped in every way except for provisions, Jarvis started for the north. He met Bertholf at the appointed meeting-place, Bertholf having done miracles in crossing the divide with the provisions.
"Meantime Lopp took a chance with the deer that no one less experienced in local conditions dared ha' done. In the teeth of a blizzard he forced the deer herd over the ice of Kotzebue Sound, miles away from land. Though he himself was badly frostbitten, an' though every one of the herders arrived on the further shore with severe frost-bites, the crossing was achieved, savin' several weeks o' time.
"So, with the deer comin' over the mountains, where they could find moss, an' with the Coast Guard men coming up the coast in the dog teams Bertholf had brought, rescue came up to us on Point Barrow.
"I've seen some strange sights in my time an' I've lived all my life with men who sported with death daily. But I've never seen a stranger sight than strong men creepin' out of the snow-banked hovels where they'd been for four long months, half-starved and three-quarters sick, to actually feel Jarvis to make sure that he was real.
"Many and many a man reckoned it was delirium to think that help had come. It seemed beyond belief. An' when Jarvis told 'em that four hundred reindeer were only a day's journey away, an' that there was fresh meat enough for all—old seadogs that hadn't had any sort of feeling for years, just broke down and cried like children.
"Then, while the excitement was at its height, and everybody was asking questions at the same time, a grizzled old whaler, who had been whalin' for half a century an' more, I guess, half-blind with scurvy, crept forward and laid his hand on Jarvis' shoulder.
"'Boys,' he said in a quavering voice, 'this ain't just one man, it's the whole United States.'"