The next day, while still too weak to proceed, they heard a noise outside the hut, like a flock of geese sweeping by, and Nindemann, seizing his gun looked through the crack of the door. Seeing something moving which he thought were reindeer, Nindemann advanced, when the door suddenly opened and a man stood on the threshold. Seeing the rifle, the man fell upon his knees, but when Nindemann reassured him by throwing the weapon to one side, friendly communication was established between the stranger and the forlorn men. Sympathizing with their desperate plight, he let them know by signs that he would return in three or four hours, or days, they could not tell which.

About six o’clock the same evening, the stranger, accompanied by two other natives, returned, bringing with them a frozen fish, which they skinned and sliced, and while Nindemann and Noros were devouring the first real food that they had had for many a day, the men brought in deer-skin coats and boots for them. Assisting them into the sleighs, they drove off with them along the river to the westward for a distance of about fifteen miles to where some other natives were located in two tents. These treated the sailors with great kindness. By signs and pantomime Noros and Nindemann tried in every possible way to explain to these natives about De Long and the remainder of the first cutter’s party, but they failed to understand, and two days later, after reaching Ku Mark Surka, the same efforts were renewed without success. In despair of securing assistance, the men implored to be conveyed to Belun, which they reached October 26.

ABANDONMENT

An interview with the commandant at Belun left the men still uncertain if they were understood, or the plight of De Long’s forlorn party made clear to the official, who, however, repeated that he would take a paper to the “Captain,” who Nindemann supposed to be his superior officer. Sick and weak from dysentery, scantily clothed, and insufficiently fed, the men were located in a miserable hut which had been assigned to them, when on the evening of November 2, 1881, the door opened and a man dressed in fur entered. As he came forward, Noros exclaimed, “My God! Mr. Melville! Are you alive? We thought that the whale-boats were all dead!”

The official, having already knowledge of the safety of the whale-boat’s party, had immediately communicated with Melville, who in all haste came to Belun. The whale-boat party were now on their road from Geemovialocke to Belun. The intrepid Melville was now determined upon an immediate search for De Long’s party, and to this end hastened back, meeting Danenhower at Burulak, where he gave him instructions to proceed with the entire party to Yakutsk, a distance of twelve hundred miles, and to communicate with the Russian government and the United States minister.

Melville was by no means recovered from his long exposure, and his frozen limbs caused him great suffering, but nevertheless he went back over the track of Nindemann and Noros step by step. On November 10, the natives who had accompanied him announced they must return as the provisions were exhausted, but Melville commanded them to go on, declaring they would eat dog as long as the twenty-two lasted, and when these gave out he should eat them. Such determination won the day, and they proceeded to the settlement of North Belun. Here a native brought him one of De Long’s records, left on the march. From these natives he learned in which direction the records had been found, and pressing on, in spite of his frozen feet, which were in such a condition he could no longer wear his moccasins, he reached, November 13, the hut where De Long’s first record had been left, a distance from North Belun of thirty-three miles. Could De Long’s chart but have shown the native settlement of North Belun, the whole party would doubtless have been saved.

On November 14 following the northeast bank of the river he came to the shores of the Arctic Ocean and found the flag-staff where articles from the first cutter had been cached. Loading his sled with all the articles found there, including logbook, chronometer and navigation box, he returned to North Belun. With fresh dog teams he set out again November 17, in an endeavour to find the hut where Erickson died. Fierce storms and lack of food forced Melville to take refuge in a snow-hole dug about six feet square and three or four feet deep.

“The storm continued to blow,” writes Melville, “the whole of that night, the next day and the next night. It was impossible to move until the next day morning, when it cleared up a little, but in the mean time, we had nothing to eat. It was too stormy to make a fire to make tea, and the venison bones which the natives had dug out were full of maggots. We chopped this up in little cubes and swallowed it whole, which made me so sick after it warmed up in my stomach that I vomited it all out again.”

Melville reached Ku Mark Surka November 24, and at Belun three days later, after an absence of twenty-three days, in which he travelled no less than six hundred and sixty-three miles over the tundra of Northern Siberia in the face of an Arctic winter. Upon reaching Yakutsk December 30, 1881, where Danenhower and his party had preceded him, Melville retained Nindemann and Bartlett to assist him in the spring search, and instructed Danenhower to proceed with the other nine men to Irkutsk, distant over nineteen hundred miles, from thence to America.

The spring search was made under the following instructions from the Navy Department at Washington:—