With the early morning, Patrick Dolan became delirious and left camp.
He was brought back with difficulty and forcibly kept under cover until
late in the day, when he sank into a stupor, whence he passed quietly
into that sleep which knows no waking.
The crucial hour had come. Food lay before the starving, yet every eye
turned from it and every hand dropped irresolute.
Another night of agony passed, during which Lemuel Murphy became
delirious and called long and loud for food; but the cold was so
intense that it kept all under their blankets until four o'clock in the
afternoon, when Mr. Eddy succeeded in getting a fire in the trunk of a
large pine tree. Whereupon, his companions, instead of seeking food,
crept forth and broke off low branches, put them down before the fire
and laid their attenuated forms upon them. The flames leaped up the
trunk, and burned off dead boughs so that they dropped on the snow
about them, but the unfortunates were too weak and too indifferent to
fear the burning brands.
Mr. Eddy now fed his waning strength on shreds of his concealed bear-meat,
hoping that he might survive to save the giver. The rest in camp
could scarcely walk, by the twenty-eighth, and their sensations of
hunger were deminishing. This condition forebode delirium and death,
unless stayed by the only means at hand. It was in very truth a pitiful
alternative offered to the sufferers.
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