CHAPTER LXII 



THE ADVENTURES OF THE AUTUMN 1917 



THE morning of August 26th a ship came in sight. It was not 

 the Herman but Crawford and Wittenberg's Challenge. I 

 knew Crawford pretty well after years of association and he 

 had not been ashore long when everything had been cleared up be- 

 tween us and was frankly understood. Crawford knew the situation 

 aboard the Bear much better than I. He said that on the basis of 

 his diagnosis of it he had concluded that "something was going to 

 drop." He knew the Bear had a depot in Prince of Wales Straits 

 but imagined that she would be in too much of a hurry to get to 

 the Pacific to stop and pick this up. Accordingly, he and Witten- 

 berg had decided they might as well have it, otherwise it would 

 be destroyed by Eskimos who would not know how to utilize a 

 quarter of it. But this year the ice conditions in Prince of Wales 

 Straits had been different from the year before and, although the 

 Challenge had tried to make her way to the depot, she had not 

 been able to do so. 



They had then decided to make for Kellett, thinking that they 

 might find there a deal of abandoned stores. If they were really 

 abandoned they would belong to the Challenge under the laws of 

 salvage, and anyway they felt sure that the Government would 

 eventually be willing to sell them for a reasonable price. They 

 had assumed that I would not be on Banks Island, possibly because 

 my party might have been lost out on the ice, and possibly be- 

 cause we might have decided to come home by another route. 

 When they found us in possession they were obviously delighted. 

 Not only were their feelings towards us friendly but it gave them a 

 chance to make a good trade. Our supplies and the wreck of the 

 Sachs, including her engines, were things which they could turn 

 to considerable use, while to us they were of no value. The Chal- 

 lenge, on the other hand, gave us our only chance of getting out 

 of the country. They were in a fine position for making a favor- 

 able sale and, although I knew the Challenge to be unsound, I was 

 happy to buy her for six thousand dollars, giving to boot all our 

 supplies on Banks Island. 



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