Not until May 20, 1855, were they able to bid farewell to the brig, and the retreat was started under the most trying experiences of sickness and famine. By June 17, they stood beside open sea, but not for fifty-six more days did they reach Upernavik.
Before the open water was reached, a sad and tragic accident had befallen one of the ablest men. “I had left the party on the floe,” writes Dr. Kane, “with many apprehensions for their safety, and the result proved they were not without cause. While crossing a ‘tide-hole’ one of the runners of the Hope’s sledge broke through, and, but for the strength and presence of mind of Ohlsen, the boat would have gone under. He saw the ice give way, and, by a violent exercise of strength, passed a capstan-bar under the sledge, and thus bore the load till it was hauled on to safer ice. He was a very powerful man, and might have done this without injuring himself, but it would seem his footing gave way under him, forcing him to make a still more desperate effort to extricate himself. It cost him his life; he died three days afterwards.
“I was bringing down George Stephenson from the sick-station, and, my sledge being heavily laden, I had just crossed, with some anxiety, near the spot at which the accident occurred. A little way beyond we met Mr. Ohlsen, seated upon a lump of ice and very pale. He pointed to the camp about three miles farther on, and told us in a faint voice, that he had not detained the party: he ‘had a little cramp in the small of his back,’ but would soon be better.
“I put him at once in Stephenson’s place, and drove him on to the Faith. There he was placed in the stern sheets of the boat, and well muffled up in our best buffalo robes. During all that night he was assiduously attended by Dr. Hayes; but he sank rapidly. His symptoms had from the first a certain obscure but fatal resemblance to our winter’s tetanus and filled us with forebodings.”
The strength of the stricken band was gradually reaching its minimum. The exertion of bailing the unseaworthy boats required all the strength left to the enfeebled party. They breathed heavily, their limbs swelled, and they suffered from insomnia, so that each day rendered their weakened efforts less promising. At this crisis of their fortunes, they saw a large seal floating on a small patch of ice, and seemingly asleep.
“Trembling with anxiety,” writes Dr. Kane, “we prepared to crawl down upon him. Petersen, with a large English rifle, was stationed in the bow, and stockings were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As we neared the animal, our excitement became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. He was not asleep; for he reared his head when we were almost within rifle-shot; and to this day I can remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of the men’s thin faces as they saw him move; their thin lives depended on his capture. I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for Petersen to fire. McGary hung upon his oar, and the boat seemed to me within certain range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that the poor fellow was paralysed by his anxiety, trying vainly to obtain a rest for his gun against the cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on his fore flipper, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curiosity, and coiled himself for a plunge. At that instant, simultaneously with the crack of our rifle, he relaxed his long length on the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell helpless to one side. I would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have controlled the men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, they urged their boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the seal, and bore him up to safer ice. The men seemed half crazy. I had not realized how much we were reduced by absolute famine. They ran over the floe, crying and laughing, and brandishing their knives. It was not five minutes before every man was sucking his bloody fingers, or mouthing long strips of raw blubber. Not an ounce of this seal was lost.”
A few days later the familiar cadence of a “halloo” fell upon the ears.
“Listen, Petersen! oars, men!” “What is it?”—and he listened quietly at first and then, trembling said, in a half whisper, “Danne markers!”
“I remember this,” writes Kane, “the first tone of Christian voice which had greeted our return to the world. How we all stood up and peered into the distant nooks; and how the cry came to us again, just as, having seen nothing, we were doubting whether the whole was not a dream; and then how, with long sweeps, the white ash cracking under the spring of the rowers, we stood for the cape that the sound proceeded from, and how nervously we scanned the green spots which our experience, grown now into instinct, told us would be the likely camping ground of wayfarer. By-and-by—for we must have been pulling a good half hour—the single mast of a small shallop showed itself; and Petersen, who had been very quiet and grave, burst out into an incoherent fit of crying, only relieved by broken exclamations of mingled Danish and English. ‘’Tis the Upernavik oil-boat! the Fräulein Flaischer! Carlie Mossyn, the assistant cooper, must be on his road to Kingatok for blubber. The Mariane (the one animal ship) has come, and Carlie Mossyn—’ and here he did it all over again, gulping down his words and wringing his hands.”
Another halt, a night’s rest, and the settlement was reached, where a generous welcome awaited the weary explorers.