But not knowing them, he built a hut, and prepared to face the winter. It
is worth noting, as evidence that Arctic hardships themselves, when not
accompanied by a lack of food, are not unbearable, that at this time,
after two years in the region of perpetual ice, the whole twenty-five men
were well, and even cheerful. Depression and death came only when the food
gave out.

The permanent camp, which for many of the party was to be a tomb, was
fixed a few miles from Cape Sabine, by the side of a pool of fresh
water--frozen, of course. Here a hut was built with stone walls three feet
high, rafters made of oars with the blades cut off, and a canvas roof,
except in the center, where an upturned whaleboat made a sort of 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 ra