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Updated: June 17, 2025
Bennett made no reply, and for upward of five minutes the two men sat motionless in the chairs, looking off into the night. After a while Adler broke silence and asked a few questions as to Ferriss's sickness and the nature and time of his death questions which Bennett answered as best he might.
Lloyd had only to look at him once to know that Bennett was at the moment aroused and agitated to an extraordinary degree. His face was congested and flaming. Under his frown his eyes seemed flashing veritable sparks; his teeth were set; in his temple a vein stood prominent and throbbing. But Lloyd was not surprised. Bennett had, no doubt, heard of Ferriss's desperate illness.
Everything she did, every minute change in Ferriss's condition, she entered upon a chart, so that in the morning when Dr. Pitts should relieve her he could grasp the situation at a glance.
It was my fault. I did what I thought was right, when I knew all the time, just as I know now, that I was wrong. So, when any one asks you about Mr. Ferriss's death you are to tell him just what you know about it understand? Through a mistake I was responsible for his death. I shall not tell you more than that, but that much you ought to know."
A few days after the operation on Ferriss's hand Bennett decided it would be advisable to allow the party a full twenty-four hours' rest. The march of the day before had been harder than any they had yet experienced, and, in addition to McPherson and the carpenter, the doctor himself was upon the sick list.
There was nothing for it now but to remove the entire load and to set Hawes, the carpenter, to work upon its repair. "Up your other sledge!" ordered Bennett. Once more the expedition returned to the morning's camping-place, and, harnessing itself to the third McClintock, struggled forward with it for an hour and a half until it was up with the first sledge and Ferriss's flag.
Unconsciously they were both working out their salvation along the same lines. Then had come Bennett's resolve to give Ferriss the conspicuous and prominent place in his book, the account of the expedition. The more Bennett dwelt upon Ferriss's heroism, intelligence, and ability the more his task became a labour of love, and the more the idea of self dropped away from his thought and imagination.
The terrible milling which he had undergone had told even upon that enormous frame, but his own ailments were promptly ignored now that Ferriss, the man of all men to him, was "down." "I didn't pull through with you, old man," he responded to all of Ferriss's protests, "to have you get sick on my hands at this time of day. No more of your damned foolishness now. Here's the quinine. Down with it!"
Ferriss's death. In any case Bennett had done what was right. For that matter he had been responsible for McPherson's death; but what else had there been to do? Bennett had spoken as he did after a moment's rapid thinking. To Adler's questions as to the manner of the chief engineer's death Bennett had at first given evasive replies.
But in some way, never afterward sufficiently explained, the cutter under Ferriss's command was crushed in the floating ice within one hundred yards of the shore. The men and stores were landed the water being shallow enough for wading but the boat was a hopeless wreck. "I believe it's Cape Shelaski," said Bennett to Ferriss when camp had been made and their maps consulted.
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