When the bodies had been removed from the cabin, and the limbs of Daggett were covered with snow, Roswell Gardiner took another look at the thermometer.  It had risen already to twenty degrees above zero.  This was absolutely warmth, compared with the temperature from which the men had just escaped, and it was felt to be so, in their persons.  The fire, however, was not the only cause of this most acceptable change.  One of the men who had been outside soon came back and reported a decided improvement in the weather.  The wind, which had been coquetting with the north-east point of the compass for several hours, now blew steadily from that quarter.  An hour later it was found, on examination, that a second thermometer, which was outside, actually indicated ten above zero!  This sudden and great change came altogether from the wind, which was now in the warm quarter.  The men stripped themselves of most of their skins, and the fire was suffered to go down, though care was taken that it should not again be totally extinguished.

We have little pleasure in exhibiting pictures of human suffering; and shall say but little of the groans and pains that Daggett uttered and endured, while undergoing that most agonizing process of having the frost taken out of his system by cold applications.  It was the only safe way of treating his case, however, and as he knew it, he bore his sufferings as well as man could bear them.  Long ere the return of day he was released from his agony, and was put back into his berth, which had been comfortably arranged for him, having the almost unheard-of luxury of sheets, with an additional mattress.

As Stephen remarked, when the men were told to try and get a little sleep, “There’s plenty of berths empty, and each on us can have as many clothes and as warm a bed as he can ask for, now that so many have hastened away to their great account, as it might be, in the pride of their youth and strength.”

Activity, the responsibility of command, and the great necessity there had been for exertion, prevented Roswell from reflecting much on what had happened, until he lay down to catch a little sleep.  Then, indeed, the whole of the past came over him, in one sombre, terrible picture, and he had the most lively perception of the dangers from which he had escaped, as well as of the mercy of God’s Providence.  Surrounded by the dead, as it might be, and still uncertain of the fate of the living, his views of the past and future became much lessened in confidence and hope.  The majesty and judgment of God assumed a higher place than common in his thoughts, while his estimate of him self was fast getting to be humble and searching.  In the midst of all these changes of views and feelings, however, there was one image unaltered in the young man’s imagination.  Mary occupied the back-ground of every picture, with her meek, gentle, but blooming countenance.  If he thought of God, her eyes were elevated in prayer; if the voyage home was in his mind, and the chances of success were calculated, her smiles and anxious watchfulness stimulated him to adventure; if arrived and safe, her downcast but joyful looks betrayed the modest happiness of her inmost heart.  It was in the midst of some such pictures that Roswell now fell asleep.