192 
I 
PARTY FOUND. 
The little tent was nearly covered. I was not among 
the first to come up; hut, when I reached the tent-cur¬ 
tain, the men were standing in silent file on each side 
of it. With more kindness and delicacy of feeling than 
is often supposed to belong to sailors, but which is 
almost characteristic, they intimated their wish that I 
should go in alone. 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!” 
We were now fifteen souls; the thermometer se¬ 
venty-five degrees below the freezing-point; and our 
sole accommodation a tent barely able to contain eight 
persons: more than half our party were obliged to keep 
from freezing by walking outside while the others 
slept. We could not halt long. Each of us took a 
turn of two hours’ sleep; and we prepared for our 
homeward march. 
We took with us nothing but the tent, furs to p r(> 
tect the rescued party, and food for a journey of fifty 
hours. Every thing else was abandoned. Two l al ’g e 
buffalo-bags, each made of four skins, were doubled up? 
so as to form a sort of sack, lined on each side by f ur ’ 
closed at the bottom but opened at the top. This ’' vllS 
laid on the sledge; the tent, smoothly folded, serving :lS 
a floor. The sick, with their limbs sewed up carefully 
in reindeer-skins, were placed upon the bed of buffi 1 ! 0 ” 
