230 
ICE-SAILING. 
and told us, in a faint voice, that he had not detained 
the party: he “had a little cramp in the small of the 
back,” but would soon be better. 
I put him at once in Stephenson’s place, and drove 
him on to the “Faith.” Here he was placed in the 
stem-sheets of the boat, and well muffled up in our 
best buffalo-robes. During all that night he was assi¬ 
duously attended by Dr. Hayes; but he sank rapidly. 
His symptoms had from the first a certain obscure but 
fatal resemblance to our winter’s tetanus, which filled 
us with forebodings. 
On Saturday, June 6, after stowing away our dis¬ 
abled comrade in the “Faith,” we again set all hands 
at the drag-ropes. The ice ahead of us bore the same 
character as the day before,— no better: we were all 
perceptibly weaker, and much disheartened. 
We had been tugging in harness about two hours, 
when a breeze set in from the northward, the first that 
we had felt since crossing Bedevilled Reach. We got 
out our long steering-oar as a boom, and made sail upon 
the boats. The wind freshened almost to a gale; and, 
heading toward the depot on Littleton Island, we ran 
gallantly before it. 
It was a new sensation to our foot-sore men, this 
sailing over solid ice. Levels which, under the slow 
labor of the drag-ropes, would have delayed us for 
hours, were glided over without a halt. We thought 
it dangerous work at first, but the speed of the sledges 
made rotten ice nearly as available as sound. The 
men could see plainly that they were approaching new 
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