Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/167

 ELISHA KENT KANE 331 Kane appreciated the gravity of the situation and the necessity of prompt measures. A relief party was at once started, which Kane led himself, despite his impaired health, physical weakness, and general unfitness for such a desperate journey ; as always, he spared not himself when danger threatened. Ohlsen, being the clearest-headed of the sledgemen, was put in a sleeping-bag and dragged on a sledge as a guide. Eighteen hours' travel were without tangible result ; Kane fainted twice on the snow ; his stoutest men were seized with trembling fits, and as yet no signs of the missing party. Fortunately Kane had taken the Eskimo, Hans Hendrik, whose keen eye discovered the track that led to the tent of the frozen men. They were alive, but crippled beyond the possibility of marching. The weather remained fine or all would have perished, and as it was, Hayes, the surgeon, in his report of their condition on reaching the brig, said : " I was startled by their ghastly appearance. When I hailed them they met me only with a vacant, wild stare. They were to a man delirious." Of the eight men only one returned sound ; two shortly died, two others suffered amputations, and three escaped with temporary disabilities. Three weeks later, on April 26th, Kane set out on what, to use his own words, " was to be the crowning expedition of the campaign, to attain the Ultima Thule of the Greenland shore." Impressed with the impracticability of a direct journey across the main ice-pack, he decided to follow the shore-line, five men dragging a sledge, while Kane and Godfrey travelled by dog-team. He had been led by his resolute spirit to overestimate the physical strength of his men and himself, and the party broke down before it had even approached the Humboldt Glacier. Their enthusiastic leader was stricken with fainting spells and rigidity of limbs, but Kane would not admit his illness to be more than temporary, and bidding the men strap him on the sledge, proceeded onward. His diminished physical powers now became evident through the freezing of his rigid and swol- len limbs. Delirious and fainting at the end of the march, he was carried in an almost insensible condition to his tent, when his men wisely took the matter in their own hands and started back for the brig. Nine days later, through forced marches and heroic efforts of his sledge-mates, themselves partially disabled, Kane was carried on board the Advance fluctuating between life and death. Hardly conscious, his mind clouded, and his swollen features barely recognizable, his general condition was such that the surgeon regarded his ultimate recovery as nearly hopeless. While Kane's recuperative powers were simply marvellous, yet he did not recover sufficiently to make another journey that spring. In this extremity he turned to his surgeon, Israel I. Hayes, who volunteered to explore the unknown shores of Grinnell Land, which lay in sight to the west of Smith Sound. With the seaman Godfrey as a companion and a dog-team as the means of transporta- tion, Hayes struggled through the almost impassable floes and bergs of the main strait and finally attained Cape Hayes, on the western coast, in about 79 45' N. latitude. The return journey to the Advance was possible only by abandoning