Meanwhile Bennett was waiting for his answer.  Ferriss’s mind was all confused.  He could no longer distinguish right from wrong.  If the lie would make Bennett happier in this last hour of his life, why not tell the lie?

“Yes,” answered Ferriss, “she did say something once.”

“She did?”

“Yes,” continued Ferriss slowly, trying to invent the most plausible lie.  “We had been speaking of the expedition and of you.  I don’t know how the subject was brought up, but it came in very naturally at length.  She said—­yes, I recall it.  She said:  ’You must bring him back to me.  Remember he is everything to me—­everything in the world.’”

“She—­” Bennett cleared his throat, then tugged at his mustache; “she said that?”

Ferriss nodded.

“Ah!” said Bennett with a quick breath, then he added:  “I’m glad of that; you haven’t any idea how glad I am, Dick—­in spite of everything.”

“Oh, yes, I guess I have,” murmured Ferriss.

“No, no, indeed, you haven’t,” returned the other.  “One has to love a woman like that, Dick, and have her—­and find out—­and have things come right, to appreciate it.  She would have been my wife after all.  I don’t know how to thank you, Dick.  Congratulate me.”

He rose, holding out his hand; Ferriss feebly rose, too, and instinctively extended his arm, but withdrew it suddenly.  Bennett paused abruptly, letting his hand fall to his side, and the two men remained there an instant, looking at the stumps of Ferriss’s arms, the tin spoon still lashed to the right wrist.

A few hours later Bennett noted that the gale had begun perceptibly to abate.  By afternoon he was sure that the storm would be over.  As he turned to re-enter the tent after reading the wind-gauge he noted that Kamiska, their one remaining dog, had come back, and was sitting on a projection of ice a little distance away, uncertain as to her reception after her absence.  Bennett was persuaded that Kamiska had not run away.  Of all the Ostiaks she had been the most faithful.  Bennett chose to believe that she had wandered from the tent and had lost herself in the blinding snow.  But here was food.  Kamiska could be killed; life could be prolonged a day or two, perhaps three, while the strongest man of the party, carrying the greater portion of the dog meat on his shoulders, could push forward and, perhaps, after all, reach Kolyuchin Bay and the Chuckch settlements and return with aid.  But who could go?  Assuredly not Ferriss, so weak he could scarcely keep on his feet; not Adler, who at times was delirious, and who needed the discipline of a powerful leader to keep him to his work; Muck Tu, the Esquimau, could not be trusted with the lives of all of them, and the two remaining men were in all but a dying condition.  Only one man of them all was equal to the task, only one of them who still retained his strength of body and mind; he himself, Bennett.  Yes, but to abandon his men?