The return of an exploring party, which had suffered severely, is well described by Kane. “We were at work cheerfully, sewing away at the skins of some mocassins by the blaze of our lamps, when, towards midnight, we heard the noise of steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen, came down into the cabin. Their manner startled me even more than their unexpected appearance on board. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to speak.
“Their story was a fearful one. They had left their companions in the ice, risking their own lives to bring us the news. Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and Pierre, were all lying frozen and disabled. Where? They could not tell. Somewhere in among the hummocks to the north and east. It was drifting heavily round them when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed and care for the others, but the chances were sorely against them. It was in vain to question them further. They had evidently travelled a great distance, for they were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could hardly be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they had come.”
DR. KANE.
Kane’s promptness saved the party. A sledge was hastily loaded, Ohlsen deposited upon it, wrapped in furs, and an immediate departure made. The thermometer stood at 76° below freezing. For sixteen hours they struggled on, till at length they came to [pg 237]a place where Ohlsen had to acknowledge he was quite “at sea,” and could not recognise the landmarks. Kane continues:—“Pushing ahead of the party, and clambering over some rugged ice-piles, I came to a long level floe, which I thought might probably have attracted the eyes of weary men in circumstances like our own. It was a light conjecture, but it was enough to turn the scale, for there was no other to balance it. I gave orders to abandon the sledge, and disperse in search of footmarks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in cache, except a small allowance for each man to carry on his person, and poor Ohlsen, now just able to keep his legs, was liberated from his bag. The thermometer had fallen by this time to minus 49° 3′ and the wind was setting in sharp from the north-west. It was out of the question to halt; it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. The men ‘extended’ in skirmishing order, but kept nervously closing up; several were seized with trembling fits, and Dr. Kane fainted twice from the effect of the intense cold. At length a sledge track was discovered, which followed, brought them in sight of a small American flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower down a little masonic banner, hanging from a tent-pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our disabled comrades; we reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one hours.
“The little tent was nearly covered.... As I crawled in, and coming upon the darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from the four poor fellows stretched on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my weakness and my gratitude together almost overcame me. They had expected me; they were sure I would come!” The tent only being capable of holding eight, while there were fifteen souls in all, they had to take “watch and watch” by turns. When sufficiently rested and refreshed, the sick men were sewn up in reindeer skins and placed on the sledge. Although they left all superfluous articles behind, the load was eleven hundred pounds. “We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly a mile an hour.... Almost without premonition, we all became aware of an alarming failure of our energies. I was of course familiar with the benumbed and almost lethargic sensation of extreme cold.... But I had treated the sleepy comfort of freezing as something like the embellishment of romance. I had evidence now to the contrary.
“Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came to me, begging permission to sleep. ‘They were not cold, the wind did not enter them now; a little sleep was all they wanted.’ Presently Hans was found nearly stiff under a drift, and Thomas, bolt upright, had his eyes closed, and could hardly articulate. At last John Blake threw himself into the snow, and refused to rise. They did not complain of feeling cold, but it was in vain that I wrestled, boxed, ran, argued, jeered, or reprimanded—an immediate halt could not be avoided.” The tent was pitched with much difficulty, and then Kane with one man pushed on to a tent and cache left the previous day, his object being to prepare some hot food before the rest arrived. He continues:—“I cannot tell how long it took us to make the nine miles, for we were in a strange kind of stupor, and had little apprehension of time. It was probably about four hours. We kept ourselves awake by imposing on each other a continued articulation of words; they must have been incoherent enough! I recall these hours as amongst the most wretched I have ever [pg 238]gone through. We were neither of us in our right senses, and retained a very confused recollection of what preceded our arrival at the tent. We both of us, however, remember a bear who walked leisurely before us, and tore up as he went a jumper that Mr. M’Garry had improvidently thrown off the day before. He tore it into shreds and rolled it into a ball, but never offered to interfere with our progress. I remember this, and with it a confused sentiment that our tent and buffalo robe might probably share the same fate.” This was a really wonderful example of the almost intoxicating and bewildering effect of intense cold, frequently noted by arctic explorers. They were dazed, and walked as in a dream. But they arrived safely at the tent, and by the time the others came up had a good steaming pemmican soup ready. When they again started, Kane tried the effect of brief three-minute naps in the snow, the men taking it in turns to wake each other, and he considered the result satisfactory. After many a halt they reached the brig. Two of the men had to undergo amputation of parts of the foot, and two died, in spite of unremitting care. The searching party had been out seventy-two hours, during which they had only rested eight.