THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 115 



the staff at Collinson Point had been that I should probably be 

 unable to get a pocket chronometer, and that if they were to refuse 

 to turn any over to me I should be thereby prevented from going 

 out on the ice. Certainly to go witliout a chronometer would not 

 only put our lives in extreme danger, but would prevent us from 

 being able to say at the end of the journey accurately where we 

 had been. This would rob any soundings we might take, for 

 instance, of most of their scientific value. 



O'Neill's decision to give me that chronometer really turned 

 the tide for me, for the chronometer point was the only one where 

 I felt myself legally weak. The expedition was under the Naval 

 Service, but the chronometers were the property of the Department 

 of Mines, and had been handed by them to the men who carried 

 them, who could make a claim on that ground that they were 

 not part of the equipment of the expedition proper and therefore 

 not subject to my requisition. 



This watch was the one we relied on in our successful ice jour- 

 neys of the next several years and without which they could not 

 have been made. I have felt that O'Neill's handing it to me 

 without either request or demand of mine was a pretty fine thing, 

 in view of the fact that he seemed to be sincerely convinced that 

 our undertaking was stupid and was doomed. Only, he had the 

 sporting fairness to feel that he did not want the mere lack of a 

 reliable timepiece to prevent my having a chance to try it out. 



O'Neill said in our conversation that before he and the other 

 members of the Geological Survey left Ottawa the question had 

 been discussed between them and their superiors as to what they 

 were to do if Stefansson's conduct of the expedition did not appear 

 to them to be the right one. He said that they had been assured 

 that if they thought it advisable to disobey my orders, their posi- 

 tion would be sustained at Ottawa. A day or two later O'Neill 

 made that statement again to the police at Herschel Island, adding 

 that from the point of view of the Geological Survey, he and several 

 of the other men were mere passengers on my expedition and not 

 subject to my orders beyond their own discretion. At Nome sev- 

 eral months earlier O'Neill had said the same thing to Mr. Jafet 

 Lindeberg and others, and it had been reported to me. I discussed 

 it with the representative of the Naval Service, Mr. George Phillips, 

 who advised me to dismiss the entire portion of the staff that had 

 been furnished by the Survey. My conviction then was, however, 

 that this was mere talk on the part of the men and that in their 

 own interests they would refrain from bringing it to an issue. 



