“You are right, Stephen,” said Gardiner, as he came up to this speck, amid the immensity of the white mantle that covered both sea and land, far as the eye could reach; “it is the cook!  The poor fellow has given out here, about half-way between the two stations.”

“There must be life in him yet, sir—­nigger as he is.  It’s not yet twenty minutes since he gave that last cry.  Help me to turn him over, Captain Gar’ner, and we will rub him, and give him a swallow of brandy.  A little hot coffee, now, might bring the life back to his heart.”

Roswell complied, first firing his pistol as a signal to those left behind.  The negro was not dead, but so near it, that a very few more minutes would have sealed his fate.  The applications and frictions used by Gardiner and the boat-steerer had an effect.  A swallow of the brandy probably saved the poor fellow’s life.  While working on his patient, Captain Gardiner found a piece of frozen pork, which, on examination, he ascertained had never been cooked.  It at once explained the nature of the calamity that had befallen the crew of the wreck.

So intent were the two on their benevolent duty, that a party arrived from the house in obedience to the signal, in much less time than they could have hoped for.  It was led by the mate, and came provided with a lamp burning beneath a tin vessel filled with sweetened coffee.  This hot drink answered an excellent purpose with both well and sick.  After a swallow or two, aided by a vigorous friction, and closely surrounded by so many human bodies, the black began to revive; and the sort of drowsy stupor which is known to precede death in those who die by freezing, having been in a degree shaken off, he was enabled to stand alone, and by means of assistance to walk.  The hot coffee was of the greatest service, every swallow that he got down appearing to set the engine of life into new motion.  The compelled exercise contributed its part; and by the time the mate, to use his own expression, “had run the nigger into dock,” which meant when he had got him safe within the hut, his senses and faculties had so far revived as to enable him to think and to speak.  As Gardiner and Stimson returned with him, everybody was up and listening, when the black told his story.

It would seem that, during the terrible month which had just passed, Daggett had compelled his crew to use more exercise than had been their practice of late.  Some new apprehension had come over him on the subject of fuel, and his orders to be saving in that article were most stringent, and very rigidly enforced.  The consequence was, that the camboose was not as well attended to as it had been previously, and as circumstances required, indeed, that it should be.  At night, the men were told to keep themselves warm with bed-clothes, and by huddling together; and the cabin being small, so many persons crowded together in it, did not fail to produce an impression on its atmosphere.