WITH STEFANSSON IN THE ARCTIC 
of any sort for twenty miles, and at the 
end of the journey was only one hun- 
dred yards out of the way. On several 
occasions that day, the last few hours 
of which we traveled in darkness, we 
entirely lost sight of him, although at 
no time did he ever go more than twenty 
feet ahead of the dogs. 
Arriving at Collinson Point too late to 
catch the outgoing mail, Stefansson, with 
one companion, started for Fort Mac- 
pherson to send out despatches, reports 
and letters. He also made arrange- 
ments there for boats and men to help 
the geographers of the southern party 
in the work of locating a navigable 
channel from Fort Macpherson to the 
mouth of the Mackenzie; he purchased 
the gasoline schooner “ North Star” and 
her complete outfit of tools, arms, 
ammunition and provisions to take the 
place of the “Karluk”; engaged ex- 
perienced men, Storker Storkersen, who 
had been with Leffingwell and Mikkel- 
sen in 1906-07, and Ole Anderson and 
Aarnout Castel, men of many years of 
Arctic experience, for his contemplated 
trip northward over the ice, and re- 
turned to Martin Point late in February. 
In the meantime, Stefansson had sent 
me to Point Barrow to bring back 
Jenness, whom he had left at Cape 
Halkett to study the Eskimo there, and 
to get the mail. I was unable to return 
before March 22, the day on which the 
ice party started. By having a rest of 
only three hours and starting out at 
night from Martin Point, I was able to 
overtake the party out on the sea ice, 
and I asked Stefansson to allow me to 
accompany him as a member of the 
supporting party. This party consisted 
of Captain Bernard of the “Mary 
Sachs,” Wilkins, photographer, Johan- 
sen, marine biologist, and Ole Anderson. 
We were to accompany Stefdnsson, 
Storkersen and Castel due north for ten 
125 
days, carrying extra rations and dog 
food. 
On the second day out however, 
Captain Bernard fell from a high pres- 
sure ridge and had to be taken back to 
shore, where the wound on his head was 
sewed up and arrangements were made 
with Crawford, one of the engineers, to 
take his place. 
On our second attempt, we came to 
open water the second day. The ice 
field on the opposite side was moving so 
rapidly that it was considered impracti- 
cable to ferry across with our improvised 
sled-rafts, so Stefansson availed himself 
of this temporary delay to send Wilkins 
and Castel back to headquarters with 
some excess baggage, and for the use of 
the southern party a few seals we had 
killed. They started at noon. By four 
o'clock that afternoon, snow had begun 
to fall heavily and the light southwest 
wind had increased to about twenty- 
five miles an hour. Three hours later we 
were in the grasp of a hurricane that blew 
at the rate of eighty-three miles an 
hour. This razed one of our tents and 
detached from the grounded shore ice 
the floe on which we were camped. The 
next day Stefansson and Storkersen 
ascertained by observations that we had 
drifted about forty miles to the eastward 
and thirty miles out to sea. 
This misfortune, which kept Wilkins 
and Castel on shore, of course reduced 
our party to only six men, nineteen dogs 
and three sleds. We encountered fre- 
quent obstacles in the form of huge pres- 
sure ridges, over which trails had to be 
cut with picks, and open water on sev- 
eral occasions prevented us from making 
rapid progress. We continued neverthe- 
less steadily northward. 
Two of our sleds were of the light Point 
Barrow type, and soon became splint- 
ered by the rough ice. (All our best 
sleds were aboard the “ Karluk.’’) The 
