372 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



is the custom of these animals — on a small patch of ice, and seemingly asleep. 

 " Trembling with anxiety," says Kane, " we prepared to crawl down upon him. 

 Petersen, with a large English rifle, was stationed in the bow, and stockings 

 were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As we neared the animal, our excite- 

 ment became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. He was not 

 asleep, for he reared his head when we were almost within rifle-shot ; and to 

 this day I can remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of 

 the men's thin faces as they saw him move ; their lives depended on his cap- 

 ture. I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for Petersen to fire. M'Gary 

 hung upon his oar, and the boat slowly, but noiselessly surging ahead, seemed 

 to me within certain range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that the j)oor fellow 

 was paralyzed by his anxiety, trying vainly to obtain a rest for his gun against 

 the cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on his fore flippers, gazed at us for a 

 moment with frightened curiosity, and coiled himself for a plunge. At that in- 

 stant, simultaneously with the crack of our rifle, he relaxed his long length on 

 the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell helpless to one side. 

 I w^ould have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have controlled the 

 men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, they 

 urged their boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the seal and bore 

 him up to safer ice. The men seemed half crazy. I had not realized how 

 much we were reduced by absolute famine. They ran over the floe, crying 

 and laughing, and brandishing their knives. It was not five minutes before 

 every man was sucking his bloody fingers, or mouthing long strips of raw 

 blubberc Not an ounce of this seal was lost." 



Within a day or two another seal was shot, and from that time forward 

 they had a full supply of food. 



When Kane, after an absence of thirty months, returned on October 11, 

 1855, to ISTew York, he was enthusiastically received. Well-deserved honors of 

 all sorts awaited him on both sides of the Atlantic ; but his health, originally 

 weak, was completely broken by the trials of his journey, and on February 16, 

 1857, he died at the Havana, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. In him the 

 United States lost one of her noblest sons, a true hero, whose name will ever 

 shine among the most famous navigators of all times and of all nations^ 



In 1860, Dr. Hayes, who had accompanied Kane on his journey, once more 

 sailed from America for the purpose of completing the survey of Kennedy's 

 Channel, and, if possible, of pushing on to the pole itself. After several narrow 

 escapes from ice-fields and icebergs, his schooner, the " United States, ' was at 

 length compelled to take up her winter-quarters at Port Foulke, on the Green- 

 land coast, about twenty miles in latitude to the south of Rensselaer Harbor„ 

 Thanks to an abundant supply of fresh meat (for the neighborhood abounded 

 with reindeer), and also no doubt to the inexhaustible fund of good-humor 

 which prevailed in the ship's company, they passed the winter without suffer- 

 ing from the scurvy ; but most of the dogs on which Dr. Hayes relied for his 

 sledge expeditions in the ensuing spring were destroyed by the same epidemic 

 which had been so fatal to the teams of Dr. Kane. Fortunately some fresh 

 dogs could be purchased and borrowed of the friendly Esquimaux, and thus, 



