It took their combined efforts to hold me in the cabin. I was still too weak to put up much of a fight. But the following morning we started.
Leaving Whinney alone, with instructions to fire an answering signal if he heard our shots, I divided our party into two groups. Dane, I might mention, still lay senseless in the lazarette. Frissell went with Triplett, Swank and Sausalito, who refused to be left behind, accompanied me.
My instructions were to circle the Kawa with a half mile radius increasing this distance each time the two parties met. Five times this toilsome operation was repeated. Hundreds of times I paused to scan the horizon with my glasses. The murky daylight, of which we were beginning to have a scant two hours, was fading and I was in despair. A short distance from the ship what there had been of a trail became confused. The fugitives appeared to have separated. Perhaps dissension as to direction had already broken out. We stumbled on in despair.
Suddenly a cry from Sausalito brought me up, standing. Her sharp eyes had detected nearly a mile away, a black figure moving across the ice, the bulky form of Plock. He was running toward a narrow lead of open water of which we had encountered several on the previous day. I saw at once that his plan was to leap the intervening water and trust to the widening breach to cut off pursuit. There was not an instant to lose.
Adjusting both hind and fore sights, I took careful aim and fired.
He pitched forward in the act of jumping and lay on the very edge of the floe. So great was the impetus of his huge carcass, that, to my horror, I saw his heavy pack slide over his head and disappear into the inky waters. It sank instantly. He was stone dead when we came up to him, his body already rigid with cold.
"We shall have to take him back," I said. In my mind was a fear, born of past experience, that we might need him.
Dragging our loathsome burden we made a slow trip toward the supposed location of the Kawa. Black night had fallen and we could see nothing. A fine snow set in. I at once fired the danger signal and was immensely relieved to hear answering shots from a direction at right angles to that in which we had been travelling. Such are the narrow squeaks of polar travel.
We found that Triplett and Frissell had gotten in before us bringing the half frozen Wigmore, whom they had stumbled across by pure luck. He was without supplies or oomiak and must have perished in another five minutes. When he had recovered sufficiently to speak he confirmed my suspicions. Two hours out from the Kawa a bitter quarrel had broken out and the deserters had separated but not before Sloff and Plock had despoiled him of his food and protecting garments. "Another mouth to feed," I thought bitterly.