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 cour