270 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



willing to accept the verdict of facts against a theory than was 

 Levi, so obviously glad was he to have been wrong at the price of 

 finding us alive. 



The first thing I asked Captain Bernard for was a list of those 

 who had come with the Sachs to Banks Island. They were George 

 Wilkins, in command; Peter Bernard, sailing master; James R. 

 Crawford, engineer; W. J. ("Levi") Baur, steward; Charles (really 

 Karl) Thomscn; Natkusiak; Mrs. S. T. Storkerson with her daugh- 

 ter Martina; and Mrs. Charles Thomsen with her daughter Annie. 

 Martina was about five years old and Annie about three. 



When I found Levi here in place of Andre Norem, there flew 

 to my mind Norem's fears for his own sanity and I asked about him. 

 Bernard's reply was brief, I remember it almost word for word 

 still: "Poor Norem. He was a fine fellow. I had known him for 

 years and so it was no credit to me that I believed him when he 

 told me his mind was going. I could see the signs plainer than 

 he could. But there were still one or two men left at Collinson 

 Point who thought he was shamming, when one morning he shot 

 himself in the alleyway outside our door and was dead before any 

 one got to him." This was the first tragedy of our expedition 

 to come to my ears. 



I now turned my inquiry to what had been an anxious burden on 

 my mind. There was reassuring news of the Karluk. Some whal- 

 ing ships had reached Herschel Island, the Captain said, before the 

 Sachs left there and had reported that the Karluk was crushed by 

 the ice sixty miles northeast of Wrangel Island in January, 1914, 

 and that all of her men had made their way safely ashore in 

 Wrangel Island; that Captain Bartlett had left them there and with 

 one Eskimo companion had crossed the hundred miles of ice to 

 the mainland of Siberia, had traveled along the coast from house 

 to house until he met Baron Kleist, a Russian official, who had 

 taken him to Emma Harbor, where Captain Theodore Pedersen * of 

 the Herman had picked him up, carrying him to St. Michaels. From 

 there the news was sent to the Government and to the press. The 

 United States was said to have detailed two revenue cutters, the 

 Bear and the Thetis, to pick the men up in Wrangel Island, and 

 the Russian government two ice breakers, the Taimyr and the 

 Vaigatch, for the same service. There seemed to be no doubt that 

 while the ship was lost to our expedition, her company of men 

 were safe. 



* Captain Pedereen is Theodore among his friends; he is in this book some- 

 times referred to by his legally correct name of C. T. Pedersen. 



