CHAPTER LVII 



ARRIVAL OF GONZALES WITH NEWS 



FINALLY, the last week in February we had the repaired 

 chronometer rated and were to start next morning for Cape 

 Grassy. Everybody had started, in fact, some days before 

 except Storkerson, Emiu and I, and we with a light sled had re- 

 mained to finish the rating of the watches. And then, when every- 

 body had long since given up hope, two sledges arrived — Captain 

 Gonzales with Knight, Illun, Pikalu, and a Minto Inlet Eskimo, 

 Ulipsinna. 



Captain Gonzales told a story which explained the ship's ab- 

 sence. The Bear had been freed from winter quarters about the 

 middle of July and during the latter part of that month and the 

 first part of August she had cruised back and forth across the 

 straits trying to find a way northward. The ice in the strait had 

 been solid across from land to land and had never moved all sum- 

 mer north of Armstrong Point. When conditions were seen to be 

 hopeless, she proceeded south and went into winter quarters at 

 Walker Bay. Wintering there was in direct disobedience of my 

 orders, which had been that the ship should stay at Armstrong 

 Point if she could not come nearer to us, but she had now gone a 

 hundred miles farther away from us. For doing this Captain 

 Gonzales had reasons which he at least considered adequate. The 

 relations with the Eskimos at Walker Bay were reported pleasant 

 and one man besides Ulipsinna was now in the employ of the expe- 

 dition. Everything was going well on board. 



Captain Gonzales brought some news from the outside world. 

 Our former engineer, Crawford of the Sachs, in partnership with 

 a man I knew from Nome, Leo Wittenberg, had purchased the 

 schooner Challenge, a ship on which I had spent much time when 

 she was commanded and partly owned by Captain Pedersen and 

 had wintered at Point Barrow in 1908-09. She is a schooner of some- 

 thing like thirty-seven tons with gasoline power, but weak, as I 

 knew both from Captain Pedersen's account and from having con- 

 sidered buying her in Nome in 1913 before we chose the Sachs. 

 However, ice conditions had been good along the north coast of 



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