As the gaunt and ghostly form of Death laid its fatal touch upon the weakest one by one, a strong man stole food from comrades, and stole again, and justly forfeited his right to live. Then one by one they died, the Eskimo, Christiansen, from exhaustion, and Lynn. “He asked for water just before dying; and we had none to give.”

Then Rice sacrificed his life for others, dying in the arms of his comrade, Frederick, near Baird Inlet, where he had gone in search of a hundred pounds of English beef abandoned in November, that Elison might be brought to camp alive. Then Lockwood died and Jewell failed—and soon joined his sleeping comrades, and yet in face of horror crowding upon horror, there is an entry:—

“On Easter Sunday we heard on our roof a snow-bird chirping loudly—the first harbinger of spring.”

In the meantime, the chief dependence of this rapidly diminishing party was derived from the gathering of shrimps—or sea-lice; the small crustacea were from one-eighth to one-half of an inch in length, consisting of about four-fifths shell and one-fifth meat, and about seven hundred of them were required to weigh an ounce.

“Dr. Pavy says,” writes Brainard in his journal, May 20, 1884, “that our food must be something more substantial than these shrimps, or none of us can live long. I caught twelve pounds of these animals to-day, and one pound of marine vegetation. Returned very much exhausted from this trip. Cannot last much longer.”

“Caterpillars are now quite numerous on the bare spots of Cemetery Bridge,” he writes a day or two later. “Yesterday Bender saw one of these animals crawling over a rock near the tent, and after watching it intently for a moment he hastily transferred it to his mouth, remarking as he did so, ‘This is too much meat to lose.’”

On May 29 there was a southeast gale and drifting snow. Brainard and Long returned from their day’s hunting with a few pounds of shrimps and a dovekie. “On returning to the tent,” writes Brainard, “Dr. Pavy and Lalor refused to admit me to their sleeping-bag, in which I occupied a place. Physically I could not enforce my rights in this matter, my condition bordering on extreme exhaustion, and wishing to avoid any unpleasantness, I crawled into one of the abandoned bags lying outside, as the only alternative. This bag was frozen and filled with snow. Can my sufferings be imagined? They certainly cannot be described.

“Suffering with rheumatism, and smarting under the sense of wrong done me by my sleeping-bag companions, mental agony was added to physical torture.

“To-day I caught six pounds of shrimps. This evening (June 6) dinner consisted of a stew composed of two boot-soles, a handful of reindeer moss, and a few rock lichens. The small quantity of shrimps which I furnish daily are sufficient only for the morning meal.

“Wednesday, June 11, 1884. Long returned at 1:30 A.M. from the open water, bringing with him two fine guillemots which he had killed. One of these was given to the general mess, and the other will be divided among those who are doing the heavy work for their weaker companions. This evening a great misfortune befell me. The spring tides have broken out the ice at the shrimping place, and my nets have been carried away and lost; my baits, poor and miserable as they were, are gone also. It is anything but pleasant to reflect that to-morrow morning we will have no breakfast except a cup of tea. It was quite late when I returned this evening from shrimping, and everybody had retired. I did not have the heart to awaken the poor fellows, but I let them sleep on quietly under the delusion that breakfast would await them at the usual hour in the morning. How I pity them!

“I made a flag, or distress signal, as it might be more properly termed, which I intend placing on the high, rocky point just north of our tent, where it may be seen by any vessel passing Cape Sabine.”

Ten days later the whistle of the Thetis blown by Captain Schley’s orders to recall his searching parties fell lightly on the ears of the dying Commander of the Lady Franklin Bay expedition.

“I feebly asked Brainard and Long if they had strength to go out,” writes Greely, “and they answered, as always, that they would do their best.”

From the cutter, as it entered the cove, Lieutenant Colwell, straining his eyes, recognized the familiar landmarks of the year before.

“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 the boat-hook and waved the flag. The man on the ridge had seen them, for he stooped, picked up a signal flag from the rock, 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 feebly 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,” continues Schley, “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 glove 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 is down.’

“‘Is Mr. Greely alive?’

“‘Yes, Greely’s alive.’

“‘Any other officers?’

“‘No.’ Then he repeated absently, ‘The tent is 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-covered shore, which at 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 from the tent.

“As Colwell approached, Norman was saying to the man,—

“‘There is the Lieutenant.’

“And he added to 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 hands and knees trying to roll away the stones that held down the flapping tent cloth.... There was no entrance, except under the flap opening, which was held down by stones. Colwell called for a knife, cut a slit in the tent cover, and looked in.”

“It was a sight of horror,” continues Schley. “On one side, close to the opening, with his head toward the outside, lay what was apparently a dead man. His jaw had dropped, his eyes were open, but fixed and glassy, his limbs were motionless. On the opposite side was a poor fellow, alive, to be sure, but without hands or feet, and with a spoon tied to the stump of his right arm. Two others, seated on the ground, in the middle, had just got down a rubber bottle that hung on the tent pole, and were pouring from it in a tin can. Directly opposite, on his hands and knees, was a dark man with a long matted beard, in a dirty and tattered dressing-gown, with a little red skull cap on his head, and brilliant, staring eyes. As Colwell appeared, he raised himself a little, and put on a pair of eye-glasses.

“‘Who are you?’ asked Colwell.

“The man made no answer, staring at him vacantly.

“‘Who are you?’ again.

“One of the men spoke up,—

“‘That’s the Major—Major Greely.’

“Colwell crawled in and took him by the hand, saying to him,—

“‘Greely, is this you?’

“‘Yes,’ said Greely, in a faint, broken voice, hesitating and shuffling with his words; ‘yes—seven of us left—here we are—dying—like men. Did what I came to do—beat the best record.’

“The scene, as Colwell looked around, was one of misery and squalor. The rocky floor was covered with cast-off clothes, and among them were huddled together the sleeping-bags in which the party had spent most of their time during the last few months. There was no food left in the tent, but two or three cans of a thin, repulsive-looking jelly, made by boiling strips cut from the sealskin clothing. The bottle on the tent-pole still held a few teaspoonfuls of brandy, but it was their last, and they were sharing it as Colwell entered. It was evident that most of them had not long to live.

“Colwell immediately sent Chief Engineer Lowe back to the cutter to put off to the Bear with Long to report and to bring the surgeon with stimulants, while he fed the dying men with bits of the food he had with him. As their hunger returned, they cried piteously for more; fearing too much at one time would injure them, Colwell wisely dissuaded them, but ‘when Greely found that he was refused, he took a can of the boiled sealskin, which he had carefully husbanded, and which he said he had a right to eat, as it was his own.’

“The weaker ones were like children, petulant, rambling, and fitful in their talk, absent, and sometimes a little incoherent.”

The Bear having by this time arrived, Sergeant Long was lifted from the cutter aboard, and there told his pitiful tale; all were dead except Greely and five others, and they were on shore in “Sore distress—sore distress”; it had been “a hard winter,” and “the wonder was how in God’s name they had pulled through.”

“No words,” says Schley, “can describe the pathos of this man’s broken and enfeebled utterance, as he said over and over, ‘a hard winter—a hard winter’; and the officers who were gathered about him in the ward room felt an emotion which most of them were at little pains to conceal.”

Soon after the Thetis came in sight, and her officers, including brave Melville, whose last sad offices for De Long had been but lately finished, went ashore and aided those from the Bear in the care and succour of the forlorn party.

As soon as possible the men were carefully moved on stretchers and carried in boats to the ships, but not before a hurricane had broken upon them, which made the labour hazardous and difficult.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Emory of the Bear was making a careful collection of all articles belonging to the camp. Near the sleeping-bags were found little packages of cherished valuables, carefully rolled up, and addressed to friends and relatives at home; the survivors, too, had already done up and addressed their own, and, strange as it may seem, a pocket-book was found containing a large roll of bills carried by the owner for some unaccountable reason to the barren shores of Lady Franklin Bay. It was not difficult to move the bodies of the dead; there was only a thin covering of sand above the mounds that formed the graves.

Looking out from the side of the hut to the ice-foot, Colwell’s attention was fixed by a dark object on the snow. Following a path which led to it from where he stood, he found the mutilated remains of a man’s body.

“It was afterward identified from a bullet hole,” writes Schley, “as that of Private Henry, who had been executed on the sixth of June.”

Wrapping it in a blanket, Colwell carried it to the landing-place, where a seaman took the bundle on his shoulder. Presently the boat came off, and all who had remained on shore were taken on board the Bear. The ships returned to Payer Harbor.

The next day, June 23, Lieutenant Emory, accompanied by Sebree and Melville, and a number of men made a second search at Camp Clay, which lasted several hours; everything was gathered up and brought away.

The officers of the Thetis meanwhile had secured from Stalknecht Island Greely’s tin boxes containing his scientific records and standard pendulum.

The relief squadron in 1884 under Captain W. S. Schley and Commander W. H. Emory, and fitted out under the personal orders of the Hon. W. E. Chandler, Secretary of the Navy, had brilliantly executed its commission and had out-rivalled the early Scotch whalers, to whom a bounty had been offered by Congress for the speedy rescue of Greely, in pushing boldly through the “middle ice.” “No relief or expeditionary vessels ever ventured at so early a date into the dangers of Melville Bay,” writes Greely.

“That the United States Navy won in the race for Sabine is an illustration of the wonderful adaptability and abundant resources of the representative American seaman, which so well fits him for coping successfully with new and untried dangers and makes him a worthy rival of our kin across the sea.”

In triumph they bore the remnant of the Lady Franklin Bay expedition home to relatives and friends. Only six reached America alive (brave, pitiful Elison had died at Godhaven, July 8), six soldiers out of a company of twenty-five, broken in health, yet courageous in spirit, and loyal to a nation that through “a hard winter—a hard winter—in sore distress—” had left them to their fate!