ral thicknesses of
shirts and jackets, was ragged and dirty. He wore a little fur cap and
rough moccasins of untanned leather tied around the leg. As he spoke,
his utterance was thick and mumbling, and in his agitation his jaws
worked in convulsive twitches. As the two met, the man, with a sudden
impulse, took off his glove and shook Colwell's hand.

"Where are they?" asked Colwell, briefly.

"In the tent," said the man, pointing over his shoulder; "over the hill;
the tent is down."

"Is Mr. Greely alive?"

"Yes, Greely's alive."

"Any other officers?"

"No." Then he repeated, absently, "The tent is down."

"Who are you?"

"Long."

Before this colloquy was over Lowe and Norman had started up the hill.
Hastily filling his pockets with bread, and taking the two cans of
pemmican, Colwell told the coxswain to take Long into the cutter, and
started after the others with Ash. Reaching the crest of the ridge, and
looking southward, they saw spread out before them a desolate expanse
of rocky ground, sloping gradually from a ridge on the east to the
ice-covered shore, which at the west made in and formed a cove. Back of
the level space was a range of hills rising up eight hundred feet, with
a precipitous face, broken in two by a gorge, through which the wind was
blowing furiously. On a little elevation directly in front was the tent.
Hurrying on across the intervening hollow, Colwell came up with Lowe and
Norman just as they were greeting a soldierly-looking man who had come
out from the tent.

As Colwell approached, Norman was saying to the man,--

"There is the lieutenant."

And he added to Colwell,--

"This is Sergeant Brainard."

Brainard immediately drew himself up to the position of the soldier, and
was about to salute when Colwell took his hand.

At this moment there was a confused murmur within the tent, and a voice
said,--

"Who's there?"

Norman answered, "It's Norman,--Norman who was in the 'Proteus.'"

This was followed by cries of "Oh, it's Norman!" and a sound like a
feeble cheer.

Meanwhile, one of the relief party, who in his agitation and excitement
was crying like a child, was down on his hands and knees trying to roll
away the stones that held down the flapping tent cloth. The tent was a
"tepik," or wigwam tent, with a fly attached. The fly, with its posts
and ridge-pole, had been wrecked by the gale which had been blowing for
thirty-six hours, and the pole of the tepik was toppling