The crucial trial on the evening of April 20 may best be realized from Tyson's graphic description: "Finally came a tremendous wave, carrying away our tent, skins, and bed-clothing, leaving us destitute. The women and children were already in the boat (Merkut having her tiny baby Charlie Polaris, Inuit-fashion, in the hood of her fur jacket), or the little ones would have been swept into watery graves. All we could do was to try and save the boat. All hands were called to man the boat--to hold on to it with might and main to prevent it being washed away. With our boat warp and strong line of _oogjook_ (seal) thongs we secured the boat to vertical projecting points of ice. Having no grapnels or ice-anchors these fastenings were frequently unloosed and broken, and we had to brace ourselves and hold on with all the strength we had. "I got the boat over to the edge of our ice where the seas first struck, for toward the farther edge the gathered momentum of the waves would more than master us and the boat would go.... We were nearly carried off, boat and all, many times during this dreadful night. The heaviest seas came at intervals of fifteen to twenty minutes.... There we stood all night long, from 9 P. M. to 7 A. M., enduring what few, if any, have gone through and lived. Tremendous seas would come and lift up the boat bodily, and carry it and us forward almost to the extreme opposite edge of our piece. "Several times the boat got partly over the edge and was only hauled back by the superhuman strength which a knowledge of the desperate condition its loss would reduce us to gave us. With almost every sea would come an avalanche of ice-blocks in all sizes, from a foot square to the size of a bureau, which, striking our legs and bodies, bowled us off our feet. We were black and blue with bruises for many a day. "We stood hour after hour, the sea as strong as ever, but we weakening. Before morning we had to make Tookoolito and Merkut [the women] get out and help us hold on too.... That was the greatest fight for life we had yet had. God must have given us strength for the occasion. For twelve hours there was scarcely a sound uttered save the crying of the children and my orders: '_Hold on! Bear down! Put on all your weight!_' and the responsive '_ay, ay, sir!_' which for once came readily enough." These awful experiences past, they were rescued ten days later, off the coast of Labrador, by Captain Bartlett of the sealing-steamer _Tigress_. They had lived on an ice-floe one hundred and ninety-six days and drifted fifteen hundred miles. Through God's providence they were restored to the world in health and without the loss of a life or even of a limb. His work accomplished, the heroic sailor, Tyson, went back to the every-day things of life without parade or boastings, and in an humble position did well and contentedly the ordinary round of work.