"That is certainly a man. It must be Battell or one of his men returning alone. And," he paused, and then added hastily: "He is scarcely able to walk and falls down from sheer exhaustion. We must go to his relief at once." And turning to Mike Gallagher, who was present, he said: "Hurry down to the ship and tell O'Brien to summon a relief party with a stretcher. Bring my medicine case with restoratives for an exhausted man. Tell Huston to explain the situation to Lief and Eric. Make all the haste possible and meet us at the mouth of the tunnel." Mike started down on the elevator at once to deliver these orders, while Captain Ganoe and myself went down the winding way on the west side. At the mouth of the tunnel we were joined by the relief party. Lief and Eric carried the stretcher, while Pat O'Brien, Paul Huston and Mike Gallagher, each had a parcel containing something intended for the relief of an exhausted man. The medicine case and some warm blankets were on the stretcher. The ice-field in this direction spread out before us into a vast plain, but the exact spot where we had observed the approaching man was hidden from view by a number of hummocks and we took these for our guide. As soon as we reached the nearest and highest of these elevations, I climbed to the top and carefully scanned the plain beyond. Several minutes elapsed without discovering any indication of the object of our search, when not more than a mile away, I saw through my glass the head and shoulders of a man, arise above the surface. For a moment he seemed to support himself on his hands and then dropped back out of sight. I carefully noted the location and we then hurried on. In a few minutes we came to a channel in the ice that had been worn out by a stream of water. A little to one side a man was lying on the bottom as if dead. We called to him, but he did not move. Lief and Eric sprang into the channel and lifted him out. It was Captain Battell and he was entirely unconscious. We could now see that he had been trying with all his strength to lift himself out of the channel which was not over four and a half feet in depth by six or seven in width. When I saw him from the summit of the ice hummock he was doubtless making the last effort to climb out, that his exhausted energies would permit. We had arrived just in time to rescue him from certain death.