THE SLEEPY COMFORT OF FREEZING. 237 



a place where Olilsen had to acknowledge he was quite "at sea," and could not 

 recognise the landmarks. Kane continues : " Pushing 1 ahead of the party, and 

 clambering over some rugged ice-piles, I came to a long level floe, which I thought 

 might probably have attracted the eyes of weary men in circumstances like our 

 own. It was a light conjecture, but it was enough to turn the scale, for there 

 was no other to balance it. I gave orders to abandon the sledge, and disperse in 

 search of footmarks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in cache, except a small 

 allowance for each man to carry on his person, and poor Ohlsen, now just able to keep 

 his legs, was liberated from his bag. The thermometer had fallen by this time to 

 minus 49 3' and the wind was setting in sharp from the north-west. It was out 

 of the question to halt; it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. The men 

 " extended " in skirmishing order, but kept nervously closing up ; several were seized 

 with trembling fits, and Dr. Kane fainted twice from the effect of the intense 

 cold. At length a sledge track was discovered, which followed, brought them 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. 



"The little tent was nearly covered. ... As I crawled in, and coming upon 

 the darkness, heard before me the burst of welcome gladness that came from the four 

 poor fellows stretched on their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my 

 weakness and my gratitude together almost overcame me. They had expected me; they 

 were sure I would come ! " The tent only being capable of holding eight, while there 

 were fifteen souls in all, they had to take "watch and watch " by turns. When suffi- 

 ciently rested and refreshed, the sick men were sewn up in reindeer skins and placed 

 on the sledge. Although they left all superfluous articles behind, the load was eleven 

 hundred pounds. " We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly a mile an hour. 

 Almost without premonition, we all became aware of an alarming failure of our energies. 

 I was of course familiar with the benumbed and almost lethargic sensation of extreme 

 cold. . . . But I had treated the sleepy comfort of freezing as something like the 

 embellishment of romance. I had evidence now to the contrary. 



"Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came to me, begging permission to 

 sleep. ' They were not cold, the wind did not enter them now ; a little sleep was all 

 they wanted/ Presently Hans was found nearly stiff under a drift, and Thomas, bolt 

 upright, had his eyes closed, and could hardly articulate. At last John Blake threw 

 himself into the snow, and refused to rise. They did not complain of feeling cold, but 

 it was in vain that I wrestled, boxed, ran, argued, jeered, or reprimanded an immediate 

 halt could not be avoided." The tent was pitched with much difficulty, and then Kane 

 with one man pushed on to a tent and cache left the previous day, his object being to 

 prepare some hot food before the rest arrived. He continues : " I cannot tell how long it 

 took us to make the nine miles, for we were in a strange kind of stupor, and had little 

 apprehension of time. It was probably about four hours. We kept ourselves awake 

 by imposing on each other a continued articulation of words; they must have been 

 incoherent enough ! I recall these hours as amongst the most wretched I have ever 



