The new year of 1873 opened in dreary form, with no game, and a dinner of two mouldy biscuit with seal entrails and blubber served frozen, as their fuel was gone. The improvident seamen had not only burned one boat, but even the boards under their sleeping-robes. Compelled at last by dire need, they now made a lamp from an old can and began to cook Eskimo-fashion. Most of the time the seamen passed idly in their igloo, quarrelling and disputing. In their ill-clad, half-starved condition they suffered terribly from the severe and prolonged cold of January, during which the mercury was often frozen, with occasional temperatures seventy degrees below freezing. Hopes of relief were high when a bear was found near, and then came a feeling of despair when the animal escaped after injuring badly the two remaining dogs. Affairs then went from bad to worse, and the utter disruption of the party was imminent, although Tyson used to the utmost his powers of command over the natives and of persuasion with the seamen. An unruly and mutinous member of the crew invaded Tyson's igloo, roundly abused the captain, and even threatened him with personal violence, well knowing that he was unarmed. The evil effects of such conduct was so plain to all that the culprit was forced by public opinion to make an apology for his actions and thus in a manner to strengthen Tyson's hands in the future. After an absence of eighty-three days the sun returned on January 19, which gave new courage to the natives and increased chances of game. When they killed a seal after many days of hunting, the starving seamen, almost crazy at the sight of food, dragged the animal into their own igloo and gave to the hunters only a small and unfair part of the meat and blubber. With difficulty Tyson was able to mollify the offended natives, by whom this injustice was the more felt as Tobias, one of Hans's babies, was quite sick and could not eat pemmican. February opened with ten days of fruitless hunting, when Hans fortunately saw a seal thrust his head up through young ice far from the floe. Would he come again? Could he kill him at that distance, and was it possible to bring him in? While asking himself these questions, with his eyes intent on the air-hole, the nose and then the head of the seal rose slowly into view. On this shot might depend their lives, and with the care and slowness of the Inuit hunter, half-starved Hans, with steady hand and unerring aim, sent a bullet through the brain of the seal, paralyzing him and thus keeping the air in the seal's lungs and floating his body. As the thin new ice would not bear a man, Tyson solved the difficulty by putting Hans in his kayak and pushing him forward as far as could be done. With his paddle braced against rough bits of the floe and by squirming his body, Hans finally reached the seal, fastened a line to it, and worked his way back in the kayak.