KANE'S EXPEDITION (1854) 17 



the north and east : it was drifting heavily round them 

 when the}' parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to feed 

 and care for the others ; but the chances were sorely 

 against them. It was in vain to question them further. 

 They had evidently travelled a great distance, for they 

 were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could hardly 

 be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they 

 had come. My first impulse was to move on the instant 

 with an unencumbered party : a rescue, to be effective or 

 even hopeful, could not be too prompt. What pressed 

 on my mind most was, where the sufferers were to be 

 looked for among the drifts. Ohlsen seemed to have 

 his faculties rather more at command than his associates, 

 and I thought that he might assist us as a guide ; but 

 he was sinking with exhaustion, and if he went with us 

 we must carry him. There was not a moment to be 

 lost. While some were still busy with the newcomers 

 and getting ready a hasty meal, others were rigging out 

 the ' Little Willie ' with a buffalo-cover, a small tent, 

 and a package of pemmican ; and, as soon as we could 

 hurry through our arrangements, Ohlsen was strapped 

 on in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog-skins and eider- 

 down, and we were off upon the ice. Our party con- 

 sisted of nine men and myself. We carried only the 

 clothes on our backs. The thermometer stood at —46°, 

 78 degrees below the freezing-point. A well-known 

 peculiar tower of ice, called by the men the ' Pinnacly 

 Berg, 1 served as our first landmark : other icebergs of 

 colossal size, which stretched in long beaded lines across 

 the bay, helped to guide us afterward ; and it was not 

 until we had travelled for sixteen hours that we bewail 

 to lose our way. We knew that our lost companions 

 must be somewhere in the area before us, within a radius 

 of 40 miles. Mr. Ohlsen, who had been for fifty hours 

 without rest, fell asleep as soon as we began to move, 

 2 



