LOST ON THE FLOES. 
191 
purpose of allaying thirst was followed by bloody lips 
and tongue : it burnt like caustic. 
It was indispensable then that we should move on, 
looking out for traces as we went. Yet when the men 
were ordered to spread themselves, so as to multiply 
the chances, though they all obeyed heartily, some 
painful impress of solitary danger, or perhaps it may 
have been the varying configuration of the ice-field, 
kept them closing up continually into a single group. 
The strange manner in which some of us were affected 
I now attribute as much to shattered nerves as to the 
direct influence of the cold. Men like McGary and 
Bonsall, who had stood out our severest marches, were 
seized with trembling-fits and short breath; and, in 
spite of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound 
bearing, I 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 Esquimaux 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 flutter¬ 
ing 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. 
