a dome.
Only under the whaleboat could a man get on his knees and hold himself
erect; elsewhere the heads of the tall men touched the roof when they sat
up in their sleeping bags on the dirt floor. With twenty-five men in
sleeping bags, which they seldom left, two in each bag, packed around the
sides of the hut, a stove fed with stearine burning in the center for the
cooking of the insufficient food to which they were reduced, and all air
from without excluded, the hut became a place as much of torture as of
refuge.

The problem of food and the grim certainty of starvation were forced upon
them with the very first examination of the caches of which Garlington had
left such encouraging reports. At Cape Isabella only 144 pounds of meat
was found, in Garlington's cache only 100 rations instead of 500 as he had
promised. Moldy bread and dog biscuits fairly green with mold, though
condemned by Greely, were seized by the famished men, and devoured
ravenously without a thought of their unwholesomeness. When November 1
came, the daily ration for each man was fixed at six ounces of bread, four
ounces of meat, and four ounces of vegetables--about a quarter of what
would be moderate sustenance for a healthy man. By keeping the daily issue
of food down to this pitiful amount Greely calculated that he would have
enough to sustain life until the first of March, when with ten days'
double rations still remaining, he would make an effort to cross the
strait to Littleton Island, where he thought--mistakenly--that Lieutenant
Garlington awaited him with ample stores. Of course all game shot added to
the size of the rations, and that the necessary work of hunting might be
prosecuted, the hunters were from the first given extra rations to
maintain, their strength. Fuel, too, offered a serious problem. Alcohol,
stearine, and broken wood from a whaleboat and barrels, were all employed.
In order to get the greatest heat from the wood it was broken up into
pieces not much larger than matches.

And yet packed into that noisome hovel, ill-fed and ill-clothed, with the
Arctic wind roaring outside, the temperature within barely above freezing,
and a wretched death staring each man in the face, these men were not
without cheerfulness. Lying almost continually in their sleeping bags,
they listened to one of their number reading aloud; such books as
"Pickwick Papers," "A History of Our Own Times," and "Two on a Tower."
Greely gave daily a lecture on geography of an hour or more; each man
related, as best he could, the striking facts about his own State and city
and, indeed, every device that ingenuity could suggest, was employed to
divert their minds and wile away the lagging hours. Birthdays were
celebrated by a little extra food--though toward the end a half a gill of
rum for the celebrant, constituted the whole recognition of the day. The
story of Christmas Day is inexpressibly touching as told in the simple
language of Greely's diary:

"Our breakfast was a thin pea-soup, with seal blubber, and a small
quantity of preserved potatoes. Later two cans of cloudberries were served
to each mess, and at half-past one o'clock Long and Frederick commenced
cooking dinner, which consisted of a seal stew, containing seal blubber,
preserved potatoes and bread, flavored with pickled onions; then came a
kind of rice pudding, with raisins, seal blubber, and condensed milk.
Afterward we had chocolate, followed later by a kind of punch made of a
gill of rum and a quarter of a lemon to each man.... Everybody was
required to sing a song or tell a story, and pleasant conversation with
the expression of kindly feelings, was kept up until midnight."

[Illustration: AN ARCTIC HOUSE]

But that comparative plenty and good cheer did not last long. In a few
weeks the unhappy men, or such as still clung to life, were living on a
few shrimps, pieces of sealskin boots, lichens, and even more offensive
food. The shortening of the ration, and the resulting hunger, broke down
the moral sense of some, and by one device or another, food was stolen.
Only two or three were guilty of this crime--an execrable one in such an
emergency--and one of these, Private Henry, was shot by order of
Lieutenant Greely toward the end of the winter. Even before Christmas,
casualties which would have been avoided, had the party been
well-nourished and strong, began. Ellison, in making a gallant dash for
the cache at Isabella, was overcome by cold and fatigue, and froze both
his hands and feet so that in time they dropped off. Only the tender care
of Frederick, who was with him, and the swift rush of Lockwood and
Brainard to his aid, saved him from death. It tells a fine story of the
unselfish devotion of the men, that this poor wreck, maimed and helpless,
so that he had to be fed, and incapable of performing one act in his own
service, should have been nursed throughout the winter, fed with double
portions, and actually saved living until the rescue party arrived, while
many of those who cared for him yielded up their lives. The first to die
was Cross, of scurvy and starvation, and he was buried in a shallow grave
near the hut, all hands save Ellison turning out to honor his memory.
Though the others clung to life with amazing tenacity, illness began to
make inroads upon them, the gallant Lockwood, for example, spending weeks
in Greely's sleeping bag, his mind wandering, his body utterly exhausted.
But it was April before the second death occurred--one of the Esquimaux.
"Action of water on the heart caused by insufficient nutrition," was the
doctor's verdict--in a word, but a word all dreaded to hear, starvation.

Thereafter the men went fast. In a day or two Christiansen, an Esquimau,
died. Rice, the sharer of his sleeping bag, was forced to spend a night
enveloped in a bag with the dead body. The next day he started on a
sledging trip to seek some beef cached by the English years earlier.
Before the errand was completed, he, too, died, freezing to death in the
arms of his companion, Frederick, who held him tenderly until the last,
and stripped himself to the shirtsleeves in the icy blast, to warm his
dying comrade. Then Lockwood died--the hero of the Farthest North; then
Jewell. Jens, the untiring Esquimau hunter, was drowned, his kayak being
cut by the sharp edge of a piece of ice. Ellis, Whisler, Israel, the
astronomer, and Dr. Pavy, the surgeon, one by one, passed away.

But why continue the pitiful chronicle? To tell the story in detail is
impossible here--to tell it baldly and hurriedly, means to omit from it
all that makes the narrative of the last days of the Greely expedition
worth reading; the unflagging courage of most of the men, the high sense
of honor that characterized them, the tenderness shown to the sick and
helpless, the pluck and endurance of Long and Brainard, the fierce
determination of Greely, that come what might, the records of his
expedition should be saved, and its honor bequeathed unblemished to the
world. And so through suffering and death, despairing perhaps, but never
neglecting through cowardice or lethargy, any expedient for winning the
fight against death, the party, daily growing smaller, fought its way on
through winter and spring, until that memorable day in June, when Colwell
cut open the tent and saw, as the first act of the rescued sufferers, two
haggard, weak, and starving men pouring all that was left of the brandy,
down the throat of one a shade more haggard and weak than they.

Men of English lineage are fond of telling the story of the meeting of
Stanley and Dr. Livingston in the depths of the African jungle. For years
Livingston had disappeared from the civilized world. Everywhere
apprehension was felt lest he had fallen a victim to the ferocity of the
savages, or to the pestilential climate. The world rung with speculations
concerning his fate. Stanley, commissioned to solve the mystery, by the
same America journalist who sent DeLong into the Arctic, had cut his path
through the savages and the jungle, until at the door of a hut in a
clearing, he saw a white man who could be none but him whom he sought, for
in all that dark and gloomy forest there was none other of white skin.
Then Anglo-Saxon stolidity asserted itself. Men of Latin race would have
rushed into each others' arms with loud rejoicings. Not so these twain.

"Dr. Livingston, I believe," said the newcomer, with the air of greeting
an acquaintance on Fifth Avenue. "I am Mr. Stanley."

"I am glad to see you," was the response, and it might have taken place in
a drawing-room for all the emotion shown by either man.

[Illustration: AN ESQUIMAU]

That was a dramatic meeting in the tropical jungles, but history will not
give second place to the encounter of the advance guard of the Greely
relief expedition with the men they sought. The story is told with
dramatic directness in Commander (now Admiral) Schley's book, "The Rescue
of Greely."

"It was half-past eight in the evening as the cutter steamed around the
rocky bluff of Cape Sabine, and made her way to the cove, four miles
further on, which Colwell remembered so well.... The storm which had been
raging with only slight intervals since early the day before, still kept
up, and the wind was driving in bitter gusts through the opening in the
ridge that followed the coast to the westward. Although the sky was
overcast it was broad daylight--the daylight of a dull winter
afternoon.... At last the boat arrived at the site of the wreck cache, and
the shore was eagerly scanned, but nothing could be seen. Rounding the
next point, the cutter opened out the cove beyond. There on the top of a
little ridge, fifty or sixty yards above the ice-foot, was plainly
outlined the figure of a man. Instantly the coxswain caught up his
boathook and waved his flag. The man on the ridge had seen them, for he
stooped, picked up a signal flag, and waved it in reply. Then he was seen
coming slowly and cautiously down the steep rocky slope. Twice he fell
down before he reached the foot. As he approached, still walking slowly
and with difficulty, Colwell hailed him from the bow of the boat.

"'Who all are there left?'

"'Seven left.'

"As the cutter struck the ice Colwell jumped off, and went up to him. He
was a ghastly sight. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes wild, his hair and
beard long and matted. His army blouse, covering several thicknesses of
shirts and jackets, was ragged and dirty. He wore a little fur cap and
rough moccasins of untanned leather tied around the leg. As he spoke his
utterance was thick and mumbling, and in his agitation his jaws worked in
convulsive twitches. As the two met, the man, with a sudden impulse, took
off his gloves and shook Colwell's hand.

"'Where are they?' asked Colwell, briefly.

"'In the tent,' said the man, pointing over his shoulder, 'over the
hill--the tent's down.'

"'Is Mr. Greely alive?'

"'Yes, Greely's alive.'

"'Any other officers?'

"'No.' Then he repeated absently, 'The tent's down.'

"'Who are you?'

"'Long.'

"Before this colloquy was over Lowe and Norman had started up the hill.
Hastily filling his pockets with bread, and taking the two cans of
pemmican, Colwell told the coxswain to take Long into the cutter, and
started after the others with Ash. Reaching the crest of the ridge and
looking southward, they saw spread out before them a desolate expanse of
rocky ground, sloping gradually from a ridge on the east to the ice-bound
shore, which on the west made in and formed a cove. Back of the level
space was a range of hills rising up eight hundred feet with a precipitous
face, broken in two by a gorge, through which the wind was blowing
furiously. On a little elevation directly in front was the tent. Hurrying
on across the intervening hollow, Colwell came up with Lowe and Norman
just as they were greeting a soldierly-looking man who had come out of the
tent.

"As Colwell approached, Norman was saying to the man: 'There is the
Lieutenant.'

"And he added to Lieutenant Colwell:

"'This is Sergeant Brainard.'

"Brainard immediately drew himself up to the position of the soldier, and
was about to salute, when Colwell took his hand.

"At this moment there was a confused murmur within the tent, and a voice
said: 'Who's there?'

"Norman answered, 'It's Norman--Norman who was in the "Proteus."'

"This was followed by cries of 'Oh, it's Norman,' and a sound like a
feeble cheer.

"Meanwhile one of the relief party, who in his agitation and excitement
was crying like a child, was down on his knees trying to roll away the
stones that held the flapping tent-cloth.... Colwell called for a knife,
cut a slit in the tent-cover, and looked in. It was a sight horror. On one
side, close to the opening, with his face toward the opening, lay what was
apparently