HAYES, HALL AND OTHER ADVENTURERS 311 



Two seals were captured on the 2ist of November, and proved 

 a temporary alleviation of the distress of the castaways. All the 

 dogs but four had been sacrificed, and everybody was suffering 

 pitifully from weakness. The ice-floe, meantime, continued to drift 

 to the southward. And so the dreary record continues day by day : 

 other seals being occasionally caught, but the situation of the wan- 

 derers growing daily more critical and distressing. For eighty- 

 three days the sun was lost to sight while the cold was intense. 

 Huddling in their snow-houses, with lamps for their only source of 

 heat, hope almost abandoned them during those wearisome days. 



Never, perhaps, was the return of the sun more welcomed than 

 by the desolate castaways on the floe. But its appearance and the 

 commencement of spring was not entirely an unmixed blessing. 

 The rising temperature naturally caused the ice to break up, and as 

 the floe upon which they were marooned gradually decreased in 

 size, fresh anxiety was caused to them by the possible danger of 

 their haven being broken up. This was realized on March nth, 

 when their ice raft broke up in a gale, leaving them on a piece less 

 than one hundred yards square. Fortunately it was of great thick- 

 ness and solidity. 



As March merged into April things grew worse and their 

 position more perilous. A violent gale, which continued, with little 

 intermission, for several days, reduced the storm-beaten company 

 to great distress from the impossibility of capturing any seals. They 

 began to suffer the pangs of hunger, and at one time it seemed as if 

 death by starvation would be the termination of their miseries. 

 Nay, worse results were to be apprehended. "Some of the men," 

 wrote Tyson, on the I5th of April, "have dangerous looks; this 

 hunger is disturbing their brains. I cannot but fear that they 

 contemplate crime. After what we have gone through, I hope this' 

 company may be preserved from any fatal wrong. We can and we 

 must bear what God sends without crime. This party must not 

 disgrace humanity by cannibalism." Fortunately a seal was killed 



