The first to die was Cross, of scurvy and starvation, and he was buried in a shallow grave near the hut, all hands save Ellison turning out to honor his memory.
Though the others clung to life with amazing tenacity, illness began to make inroads upon them, the gallant Lockwood, for example, spending weeks in Greely's sleeping bag, his mind wandering, his body utterly exhausted.
But it was April before the second death occurred--one of the Esquimaux.
"Action of water on the heart caused by insufficient nutrition," was the doctor's verdict--in a word, but a word all dreaded to hear, starvation.
Thereafter the men went fast.

In a day or two Christiansen, an Esquimau, died.

Rice, the sharer of his sleeping bag, was forced to spend a night enveloped in a bag with the dead body.

The next day he started on a sledging trip to seek some beef cached by the English years earlier.
Before the errand was completed, he, too, died, freezing to death in the arms of his companion, Frederick, who held him tenderly until the last, and stripped himself to the shirtsleeves in the icy blast, to warm his dying comrade.

Then Lockwood died--the hero of the Farthest North; then Jewell.