Continuing the next two days with their half-frozen comrade, they reached Eskimo Point. Here they cut up an abandoned ice-boat for fuel, and endeavoured to thaw out Elison’s limbs and dry his clothing. “When the poor fellow’s face, feet, and hands commenced to thaw from the artificial heat,” says Frederick, “his sufferings were such that it was enough to bring the strongest to tears.”
After labouring nineteen hours for the welfare of their suffering comrade, Rice and Frederick attempted to advance.—“We tried to keep Elison in front of us, but to no avail. He would stagger off to one side, and it seemed every moment that the frost was striking deeper into the poor man’s flesh. We fastened a rope to his arm and the sledge, as it now took three men to haul our load, but every few rods the poor fellow would fall, and then sometimes he was dragged several feet. No person can imagine how that poor man suffered.”
Unable to haul Elison any farther, in the face of a gale and the piercing temperature of -20°, it was decided that Rice should start for Camp Clay for assistance. With only a bit of frozen meat for food, he started alone in the Arctic darkness and travelled twenty-five miles in sixteen hours, reaching the camp at midnight. Immediate relief was started, Sergeant Brainard and Christiansen leading the advance, to be followed two hours later by Lieutenant Lockwood, the doctor, and four of the men.
The fearful night spent by Frederick, Lynn, and their frozen companion can hardly be pictured. “We tried to warm him,” says Frederick, “but as we lay helpless and shivering with the cold, and poor Elison groaning with hunger (his frozen lips did not permit him to gnaw the frozen meat) and pain, you can imagine how we felt. Lynn was a strong, able-bodied man, but the mental strain caused by Elison’s sufferings made him weak and helpless. In fact, I was afraid that his mind would be impaired at one time. We were but a few hours in the bag when it became frozen so hard that we could not turn over, and we had to lay in one position eighteen hours; until, to our great relief, we heard Brainard’s cheering voice at our side. There was nothing more welcome than the presence of that noble man, who had come in advance with brandy for Elison and food for all.”
The rescue party, although weak and half-starved themselves, reached Elison with all despatch to find him in a very critical condition; his hands and feet were frozen solid; his face frozen to such an extent that there was little semblance of humanity.
THE BEGINNING OF A HARD WINTER
If November was ushered in with such misfortune, the succeeding months record a history of unparalleled misery and suffering. The hunters were ever on the alert, and the occasional game brought in was the only cheer that surrounded these famishing outcasts. A seal, a bear, a few foxes, dovekies, and ptarmigan were all that the desolate land gave forth to the unremitting vigilance of the hunters, and, reduced to the last extremities of famine, shrimps, seaweed, reindeer-moss, saxifrage, and lichens were diligently sought for and devoured.
On Thanksgiving Day,—what irony in the mere name,—these men celebrated by a little extra allowance of food—and Greely wrote in his journal:—