g of the end. A week later the actual starvation
began. Slower and slower moved the expedition on its daily march,
faltering, staggering, blinded and buffeted by the incessant northeast
winds, cruel, merciless, keen as knife-blades. Hope long since was dead;
resolve wore thin under friction of disaster; like a rat, hunger gnawed
at them hour after hour; the cold was one unending agony. Still Bennett
was unbroken, still he urged them forward. For so long as they could
move he would drive them on.

Toward four o'clock on the afternoon of one particularly hard day, word
was passed forward to Bennett at the head of the line that something was
wrong in the rear.

"It's Adler; he's down again and can't get up; asks you to leave him."

Bennett halted the line and went back some little distance to find Adler
lying prone upon his back, his eyes half closed, breathing short and
fast. He shook him roughly by the shoulder.

"Up with you!"

Adler opened his eyes and shook his head.

"I--I'm done for this time, sir; just leave me here--please."

"H'up!" shouted Bennett; "you're not done for; I know better."

"Really, sir, I--I _can't_."

"H'up!"

"If you would only please--for God's sake, sir. It's more than I'm made
for."

Bennett kicked him in the side.

"H'up with you!"

Adler struggled to his feet again, Bennett aiding him.

"Now, then, can you go five yards?"

"I think--I don't know--perhaps--"

"Go them, then."

The other moved forward.

"Can you go five more; answer, speak up, can you?"

Adler nodded his head.

"Go them--and another five--and another--there--that's something like a
man, and let's have no more woman's drivel about dying."

"But--"

Bennett came close to him, shaking a forefinger in his face, thrusting
forward his chin wickedly.

"My friend, I'll drive you like a dog, but," his fist clenched in the
man's face, "I'll _make_ you pull through."

Two hours later Adler finished the day's march at the head of the line.

The expedition began to eat its dogs. Every evening Bennett sent Muck Tu
and Adler down to the shore to gather shrimps, though fifteen hundred of
these shrimps hardly filled a gill measure. The party chewed
reindeer-moss growing in scant patches in the snow-buried rocks, and at
times made a thin, sickly infusion from the arctic willow. Again and
again Bennett despatched the Esquimau and Clarke, the best shots in the
party, on hunting expeditions to the southward. Invar