Spring had come with the flood rush that set the ice free. Wild geese and duck and plover and curlew and cranes and tern were winging north. Day after day from his port window the commander watched the ice floes drifting out to sea; drifting endlessly as though from some vast inland region where lay an unclaimed empire, or a passage to the South Sea. Song birds flitted to the ship and darted fearfully away. Crows perched on the yardarms. Hawks circled ominously above the lifeless masts. Herds of deer dashed past ashore pursued by the hungry wolves, who gave over the chase, stopped to sniff the air and came down to the water’s edge howling all night across the oozy flats. More ... need not be told. The ships were a pest house; the region, a realm of death; the port, a place accursed; the silence, as of the grave but for the flacker of vulture wings and the lapping—the tireless lapping of the tide that had borne this hapless crew to the shores of death. Artist brush has never drawn any picture half so terrible as the fate of the Danes on Hudson Bay.... Nor need the symptoms of scurvy be described. Salt diet and lack of exercise caused overwhelming depression, mental and physical. The stimulants that Munck plied—two pints of wine and a pint of whiskey a day—only increased the languor. Nausea rendered the thought of food unendurable. Joints swelled. Limbs became discolored. The teeth loosened and a spongy growth covered the gums.... Four days Munck lay without food. Reaching to a table, he penned his last words: “As I have now no more hope of life in this world, I request for the sake of God if any Christians should happen to come here, they will bury my poor body together with the others found, and this my journal, forward to the King.... Herewith, good night to all the world, and my soul to God....” “JENS MUNCK.” The stench from the ship became unendurable. The Dane crawled to the deck’s edge. It was a mutual surprise for him to see the two men ashore alive, and for them to see him. Coming over the flats with painful and labored weakness, they helped him down the ship’s ladder. On land, the three had strength only to kindle a fire of the driftwood, which kept the wolves off, and lie near it sucking the roots of every green sprout within reach. This was the very thing they had needed—green food. From the time they began eating weeds, sea nettles, hemlock vines, sorrel grass, they recovered.