Could he abandon them? Dispassionately he tried to consider it. On one hand, a far better chance for life to twelve men, certain death for two. On the other hand, the strong probability that all would perish in that hut before relief arrived. Going on, leaving his cripples behind, looked logical. But De Long shook his head. While he lived, he could abandon nobody to the loneliness of that Arctic waste, least of all the heroic Erichsen, who unrelieved through that terrible night in the boat, had clung to the tiller, safely steering them all through the gale, and now in the agony of his decaying feet, was uncomplainingly paying the penalty of his steadfastness. With a sigh, the captain decided to stay on in the hut, while he sent ahead for help. Who should go? Running over in his mind the physical condition of his men, he decided on Surgeon Ambler and Nindemann, the two he felt who were most likely to get through. At six o’clock, Nindemann returned, empty-handed except for a dead gull he had found. Eagerly the hungry seamen, roused by Nindemann’s entrance, crowded round while Ah Sam plucked the gull, only to discover that the carcass had long since rotted. Sadly it was thrown away, and the disappointed sailors once more turned in. Alexey still was missing, but no fears were felt for him, and quickly, without exception now, the exhausted company sank into deep slumber. About nine o’clock came a knock on the door of the hut and Alexey’s voice rang out, “All sleep here?” Immediately, sleeping heads lifted here and there over the floor as the door flew back and Alexey cried proudly, “Captain! I shoot two reindeer!” and in staggered the snow-covered hunter bearing on his back the hind quarter of a doe. “Well done, Alexey!” shouted the captain, leaping to his feet and kissing the startled Indian while all about men sprang up, almost smothering the beaming Alexey in handclasps and in clumsy hugs. Immediately sleep was forgotten, the fires poked up, and that haunch of venison, cut in chunks, was roasting on a dozen sticks. Each man got a pound and a half; most of them, long before their meat was hardly more than seared before the fire, were gorging themselves on the raw flesh! With startling rapidity, it disappeared and hungrily his men looked toward the bloody remnant of that haunch, but De Long, stowing it behind him in the hut, shook his head and ended the feast, leaving the party no option but to return to sleep, while only Snoozer, still gnawing wolfishly at the shank bone, remained awake. That changed De Long’s plans. Issuing only a very scanty ration of pemmican for breakfast, he sent Alexey and six men out in the morning to get the deer, while he concluded to spend that day and the next in the hut, recuperating the sick, and then with his two days’ supply of pemmican still intact and the remainder of the two does for food on the journey, push on southward with all hands.