Ferriss had followed his example.

The whaleboat and the number two cutter were the only boats now left to
the expedition. The third boat had been abandoned long before they had
reached open water.

An hour later Adler, the sailing-master, who had been bailing, and who
sat facing Bennett, looked back through the storm; then, turning to
Bennett, said:

"Beg pardon, sir, I think they are signalling us."

Bennett did not answer, but, with his hand gripping the tiller, kept his
face to the front, his glance alternating between the heaving prow of
the boat and the huge gray billows hissing with froth careering rapidly
alongside. To pause for a moment, to vary by ever so little from the
course of the storm, might mean the drowning of them all. After a few
moments Adler spoke again, touching his cap.

"I'm sure I see a signal, sir."

"No, you don't," answered Bennett.

"Beg pardon, I'm quite sure I do."

Bennett leaned toward him, the cast in his eyes twinkling with a wicked
light, the furrow between the eyebrows deepening. "I tell you, you don't
see any signal; do you understand? You don't see any signal until I
choose to have you."

The night was bitter hard for the occupants of the whaleboat. In their
weakened condition they were in no shape to fight a polar hurricane in
an open boat.

For three weeks they had not known the meaning of full rations. During
the first days after the line of march over the ice had been abruptly
changed to the west in the hope of reaching open water, only
three-quarter rations had been issued, and now for the last two days
half rations had been their portion. The gnawing of hunger had begun.
Every man was perceptibly weaker. Matters were getting desperate.

But by seven o'clock the next morning the storm had blown itself out. To
Bennett's inexpressible relief the cutter hove in view. Shaping their
course to landward once more, the boats kept company, and by the middle
of the afternoon Bennett and the crew of the whaleboat successfully
landed upon a bleak, desolate, and wind-scourged coast. But in some way,
never afterward sufficiently explained, the cutter under Ferriss's
command was crushed in the floating ice within one hundred yards of the
shore. The men and stores were landed--the water being shallow enough
for wading--but the boat was a hopeless wreck.

"I believe it's Cape Shelaski," said Bennett to Ferriss when camp had
been made and their maps consulted. "But if it is, it'