They had drawn the sledge, top-heavy as it was with its living burden of sick men, over the cracked and uneven ice, when the strength of the whole party seemed to fail. They no longer complained of cold; they only asked to sleep, just to be allowed to sink down in the snow and sleep. Kane knew that sleep in that frozen snow meant death. He ordered the tent to be pitched; their hands were too powerless to light a fire; they were too tired to thaw their frozen food. After a short rest they struggled on again. It was desperate work. They had to eat the snow; their mouths swelled, and they became speechless. At last they reached the brig. They were like men in a dream as they staggered back; most of them were frost-bitten, several delirious, more than one dying. They greeted the men on board with a vacant look, and fell into their cabin beds as they were.

One morning in the following week (it was now April) they were watching by the side of a member of the crew, who was dying from the long exposure on the ice, when one came hurrying down into the cabin, crying,—

"People hallooing ashore."

Kane went up on deck. There they were, true enough, standing like so many bears on all sides of the rocky harbour, dotting the snowy shores, wild and strange looking, but human beings all the same. Waving their arms about, they cried, "Hoah, ha, ha," over and over again. Indeed this must have been the first time they had ever seen a white man, and this pale-faced crew must have startled them considerably. Leaving their teams of dogs and sledges, they agreed to go on board; but they were troublesome visitors, stealing everything they could lay hands on, so that the crew were not entirely sorry when they yoked in their dogs, cracked their long sealskin whips, and span away over the ice at the rate of some seven knots an hour.

And now Kane started on a very important journey. His plan was to follow the ice-belt to the great glacier of Humboldt, and so make an attempt to cross the ice to the American side. By the fourth of May they reached it, but it was dearly earned. Kane just saw the great glacier—saw the "mighty crystal bridge" which connected America and Greenland—and then once more the strength of the little party failed. Three were seized with snow blindness, scurvy attacked them all, and worse still, a friendly bear ate all their food. There was nothing for it but to return to the brig. Dr. Kane himself was the worst of all. One foot was frozen, and he fainted with every movement. He was strapped on to the sledge and drawn by five of his bravest men, themselves almost too weak and ill to get along. Through deep snow they plodded wearily on, till they carried their commander, more dead than alive, to the brig. He hardly became conscious till the twentieth of May, when, propped up by pillows, and surrounded by his sick and pale-faced mates, he once more realized the fact that he had failed to force a passage to the north.

Time was gliding on. Spring came, summer followed; still fast lay the brig firmly clenched into the ice. Daily did the prisoners watch for some sign of softening in the ice, some slight relaxing of that iron grip which imprisoned their little ship. But their hopes grew dim, and their prospects of escape slight, as the autumn season advanced, and the sunbeams fell more languidly on hard-frozen floes. From time to time the strongest men of the party started off on expeditions of discovery. They discovered a vast tract of open water toward the pole. They found a whole island of eider ducks, and killed two hundred birds. They pushed their way to south and west, but they failed to find any retreat or way of advance. The prospect was dark indeed. There was no coal and but little wood to keep them warm through another winter; there was only a scanty supply of food to help them to fight against the diseases fast taking stronger hold on them; the ship was a hospital; most of the dogs were dead. What was to be done? Leave the brig and push southwards with sledge and boats? No, Kane could not bring himself to do this while there was a ray of hope.

"It is a simple act of honour to remain by the brig," wrote Kane. "Come what may, I share her fortunes. I cannot disguise it from myself that we are wretchedly prepared for another winter on board."

One day he called together his crew, explained matters to them, alluded to their duty to the ship, gave permission to those who liked to go, then directed the roll to be called and each man to answer for himself. There were seventeen men, broken down, home-sick, depressed. Eight stood firm, nine chose to fight their way south at all hazards. Kane gave them what food he could spare, good-byes were said, and hands were wrung in silence, and they disappeared among the hummocks.

It was with heavy hearts that Kane and his eight brave men set to work to prepare for their second winter of gloom and darkness. "But it is horrible to look forward to another year of disease and darkness, to be met without fresh food and without fuel."

They set to work to gather moss to line their sleeping compartment. Of coal there was none, and for fuel they had to burn their topmasts, cross-beams, girders, and even peel off the outer sheathing of the vessel.

The want of food was even more pressing. On the fifth of December two potatoes were served out to sick men, and the remaining twelve hoarded away as "worth their weight in gold." A bear's head was served up as a delicacy to the invalids, with a pint of fresh blood from two rabbits; the liver of a walrus, eaten with little slices of his fat, and rat soup—these were among the delicacies indulged in. Indeed rats were becoming a plague on board during that long, dark winter. They destroyed the furs and shoes, and gnawed their way into the beds; and one day a rat bit Kane's finger to the bone, having made a nest in one of his fur mittens, and resenting his putting it on. By March things looked bad indeed. The whole party was quite broken down. Every man on board had scurvy, old wounds opened anew, and most of the crew lay through the long, dark day and yet longer night in their berths, powerless to rise. With the first dawning streaks of light, Hans the huntsman had struggled out to the huts of the Eskimos for fresh food; for it was becoming more certain every hour that without fresh meat the days of the party were numbered. Still the iron-hearted commander held on. Often the only man up, he had to discharge the duties of cook, commander, and sick nurse, cheering his men when his own heart was bursting, hoping on for better days when his crew only wished to die and forget their miseries.

On the tenth of March, Hans came back. "Bim, bim, bim "sounded from the deck, and the chorus of returning dogs, and in another moment Kane had grasped his hand in silent joy. They might yet be saved, for Hans had not returned empty-handed.

"Speak loud, Hans, that they may hear in the bunks," cried Kane, as Hans related his adventures. Soon the sick men were fed on thinly-sliced frozen walrus heart with vinegar, to be followed by blood gravy with wheaten bread.

But now fuel gave in, and the sorest trial of all to Kane came in taking more wood from the brig, and so rendering her unfit to go to sea again.

"It is a hard trial. I have spared neither exertion, thought, nor suffering to save the seaworthiness of our little vessel, but all to no end. She can never bear us to the sea now," he wrote piteously.

So they struggled on till May, when even the stout-hearted Kane saw that future discovery to the north was rendered impossible in their present weak condition.

Reluctantly, sadly, he made up his mind to abandon the brig, and to make the best of their way home over the ice with sledges and the sick men.

On the twentieth of May the little crew collected to take farewell of their ice home. It was Sunday. The moss walls had been torn down and the wood that supported them burned, the beds were gone, the galley unfurnished and very cold—everything looked desolate enough.

Kane read prayers ending, "Accept our gratitude, and restore us to our homes," and a chapter of the Bible. He then addressed his pale-faced crew.

"There are thirteen hundred miles of ice and water between us and North Greenland," he said, "but by obedience and energy you can manage it. It is the duty of all to consider first the sick and wounded. I hope we have done what we ought to prove our devotion to the cause which we have in hand."

They then went up on deck, the flags were hoisted and hauled down again, the party walked twice round the brig, somewhat regretfully now the time had come to leave her, and silently they turned their heads on what had been their home for two long years.

Each man had a woollen under-dress and a suit of fur, boots made of the cabin carpet covered with fur, and goggles for snow blindness.

Thus he set out, travelling but slowly and painfully. Indeed the feeble caravan took eight days to go fifteen miles. After eighty-one miles over the snow and ice they reached open water. Launching the three boats, the Faith, Hope, and Red Eric, they embarked on a smooth sea. But the wind soon freshened, the Red Eric  was swamped, and the crew only just managed to scramble on to the other boats in time. They pushed on, though almost blinded by a snow-storm, and made for Northumberland Island.

It would take too long to tell of the hardships and accidents the little party had to undergo—how their boats nearly sank, how they were stopped by storms or lost in fogs, how the ice-floe broke up suddenly, tossing the ice into hills with a hideous noise and whirling the helpless boats on the top of a seething cauldron. By the twenty-eighth of July things looked bad; their strength failed, their feet were so swollen they had to cut open their boots, they were too tired to sleep, too hungry to exist much longer. They were in the open bay, in boats so frail and unseaworthy as to require constant bailing to keep them afloat.

One day the starving crew saw a seal floating on a small patch of ice, and seemingly asleep. Stationing a man in the bow with the large English rifle, and drawing stockings over their oars as mufflers, they made for the animal. Their excitement was so intense that they could hardly keep stroke. To speak would be fatal. In deep silence they moved on.

"He was not asleep, for he raised his head when we were almost within rifle-shot, and to this day I can remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of the men's thin faces as they saw him move." Their very lives depended on his capture. The seal rose, gazed at his murderers for a moment, and coiled himself for a plunge. The same instant crack went the rifle, and he relaxed his long length on the ice. With a wild yell the crew seized him and bore him on to safer ice. The men were half crazy with hunger. They ran over the ice, crying and laughing and brandishing their knives, and in less than five minutes they were greedily eating strips of raw blubber.

Ten days later, and suddenly a familiar sound was heard over the waters: "Halloo! halloo!"

"Listen, men! What is it?" they cried, trembling.

Then a single mast came into sight, and one of the men, Petersen by name, burst into a fit of crying. "'Tis the oil-boat from Upernavik," he sobbed, wringing his hands. "'Tis Carlie looking for blubber!"

He was right. Carlie was getting the year's supply of blubber, and was surprised by the sight of this ragged, famished, pale-faced crew.

Questions were poured forth in a stream, without leaving time for answers.

"What had been passing in the big world? What of America? Any news of Franklin?"

"Sebastopol ain't taken yet," was Carlie's first remark.

"And what is Sebastopol?" cried the explorers, ignorant of the Crimean war, which was moving all nations. Then they heard that Franklin's party, or traces of the dead, had been found one thousand miles to the south of where they had been searching for them.

For the first time for eighty-four days they slept under the shelter of a roof, and heard human voices welcome them back to civilized regions again.

On the eleventh they fell in with a United States vessel, dispatched to learn tidings of Kane and his missing crew. They saw the Stars and Stripes from afar. The Faith  was lowered for the last time, and the little flag which had floated so near the poles of both hemispheres once more floated in the breeze.

"Is this Dr. Kane?" asked the captain, as he looked at a little, shrivelled man in a ragged flannel shirt. With the "yes" that answered his question, the rigging was manned, and a ringing burst of cheers from the throats of their countrymen struck new life into the souls of the tired explorers.