DR. KANE:S FAMOUS ARCTIC VOYAGE 283 



manner in which some of them were affected must be attributed as 

 much to shattered nerves as to the direct influence of the cold. Men 

 like McGary and Bonsall, who had stood out the severest marches, 

 were seized with trembling fits and short breath ; and, in spite of all 

 his efforts to keep up an example of sound bearing, Kane fainted 

 twice on the snow. 



"We had been nearly eighteen hours out without water or food, 

 when a new hope cheered us. I think it was Hans, our Eskimo 

 hunter, who thought he saw a broad sledge-track. The drift had 

 nearly effaced it, and we were some of us doubtful at first whether 

 it was not one of those accidental rifts which the gales make in the 

 surface-snow. But as we traced it on to the deep snow among the 

 hummocks, we were led to footsteps; and, following these with 

 religious care, we at last came 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." 



They found the little tent almost buried in the snow. When 

 Dr. Kane came up, his men, who had outstripped him, were stand- 

 ing in silent file on each side of it. With a delicacy of feeling which 

 is almost characteristic of sailors, and seems instinctive to them, 

 they expressed a desire that he should enter alone. As he crawled 

 beneath the tent-curtain, and, coming upon the darkness, heard 

 before him the burst of welcome gladness that came from the poor 

 prostrate creatures within, and then for the first time the cheer 

 without, his weakness and gratitude almost overcame him. "They 

 had expected him," was their exclamation ; "they were sure he would 

 come !" 



The return was made with all the haste available. Nothing 

 was carried but what was indispensable, everything else being 

 abandoned. A great part of the track lay among a succession of 

 hummocks, fifteen or twenty feet high and too steep to be ascended. 



