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.  Invariably they returned empty-handed.  Occasionally they reported old tracks of reindeer and foxes, but the winter colds had driven everything far inland.  Once only Clarke shot a snow-bunting, a little bird hardly bigger than a sparrow.  Still Bennett pushed forward.

One morning in the beginning of the third week, after a breakfast of two ounces of dog meat and a half cup of willow tea, Ferriss and Bennett found themselves a little apart from the others.  The men were engaged in lowering the tent.  Ferriss glanced behind to be assured he was out of hearing, then: 

“How about McPherson?” he said in a low voice.

McPherson’s foot was all but eaten to the bone by now.  It was a miracle how the man had kept up thus far.  But at length he had begun to fall behind; every day he straggled more and more, and the previous evening had reached camp nearly an hour after the tent had been pitched.  But he was a plucky fellow, of sterner stuff than the sailing-master, Adler, and had no thought of giving up.

Bennett made no reply to Ferriss, and the chief engineer did not repeat the question.  The day’s march began; almost at once breast-high snowdrifts were encountered, and when these had been left behind the expedition involved itself upon the precipitate slopes of a huge talus of ice and bare, black slabs of basalt.  Fully two hours were spent in clambering over this obstacle, and on its top Bennett halted to breathe the men.  But when they started forward again it was found that McPherson could not keep his feet.  When he had fallen, Adler and Dennison had endeavoured to lift him, but they themselves were so weak that they, too, fell.  Dennison could not rise of his own efforts, and instead of helping McPherson had to be aided himself.  Bennett came forward, put an arm about McPherson, and hauled him to an upright position.  The man took a step forward, but his left foot immediately doubled under him, and he came to the ground again.  Three times this manoeuvre was repeated; so far from marching, McPherson could not even stand.