142 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



this was at its maximum. But as the gale proceeded the tempera- 

 ture had risen. Now that it was over the weather kept so warm 

 that, although the season was still winter, the temperature was 

 actually that of spring. At times it came almost up to the freezing 

 point. This was pretty serious, for when the ice has some tendency 

 to movement, as is usual after a gale, it is not likely to be set fast 

 solidly enough for travel by a frost of less than ten or twenty degrees 

 below zero. 



On Sunday, March 22, 1914, we made the start out on the ice 

 northward from Martin Point. This was about three weeks or a 

 month too late. The sun was getting higher every day and spring 

 was approaching, when on the ice of the polar sea no man can work 

 with safety or comfort. But with the failure of the Karluk behind 

 us it was now or never. Neither the Government at Ottawa nor 

 the men of our own party would have continued their support had 

 we failed to accomplish something that spring of 1914. 



Besides the men of our own party, we had at Martin Point vis- 

 itors from the two whaling ships wintering in the vicinity, Heard, 

 Mott and Silsbee of the Polar Bear; Baur, Hazo and McKin- 

 non of the Belvedere. These were some of the men without whose 

 assistance and encouragement we could not have been ready to start 

 even then and probably could not have started at all. I remember 

 distinctly the warmth of their farewells and good wishes, but my 

 recollection of the weather seems less acute, or at least different from 

 theirs. Neither my diary nor my memory tells anything of a ter- 

 rific gale that was raging, yet Mr. Mott in a magazine article gave 

 this account of our departure: "When Stefansson started the ice 

 was soft and the weather bad, with a strong wind blowing. It 

 was so bad that we felt we couldn't go home that day, although our 

 camp was only ten miles away. It was an awful day. The wind 

 was howling and the snow was swirling as they pulled out into the 

 teeth of the blizzard, and before they had gone fifty yards they were 

 out of sight. We fought our way back to our tents, thankful we 

 weren't in their places. The next day I wrote in my diary that I 

 never wanted to be an explorer, that they earned all the glory and 

 • all the honor that the world can give them. It is worse than being 

 in the trenches." 



This is the point of view of a man who was present when we 

 started and who wrote of it later, after going home and serving the 

 full American part of a war we were never even to hear of for more 

 than a year. Unfortunately, as I believe, for Mr. Mott, the arctic 

 blizzards which he encountered had always found him in the vicinity 



