Henry Hudson by Thomas A. Janvier

Nerves go to pieces in the Arctic. Captain Back, who commanded the "Terror" on her first northern voyage (1836), has told how there comes, as the icy night drags on, "a weariness of heart, a blank feeling, which gets the better of the whole man"; and Colonel Brainard, of the Greely expedition, wrote: "Take any set of men, however carefully selected, and let them be thrown as intimately together as are the members of an exploring expedition -- hearing the same voices, seeing the same faces, day after day -- and they will soon become weary of one another's society and impatient of one another's faults."

The Greely expedition -- composed of twenty-five men, of whom only seven were found alive by the rescue party -- in many ways parallels, and pointedly illustrates, the Hudson expedition. There was dissension in Greely's command almost from the start. Surgeon Pavy's angry protests compelled the sending back in the "Proteus" -- paralleling the sending back of Coleburne in the pink -- of one member of the company; and Lieutenant Kislingbury -- paralleling Juet's insubordination -- objected so strongly to Greely's regulations that he gave in his resignation and tried, unsuccessfully, to overtake the "Proteus" and go home in her. Being returned to Fort Conger, he was not restored to his rank, and remained -- as Juet remained after being superseded -- a malcontent.