50 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



whalers. He had dreams of finding gold and hopes of 

 meeting Eskimos who did not know the present high 

 prices of fox skins, from whom he could buy at a great 

 profit. Some thought accordingly that Klinkenberg was 

 now in Victoria Island or Banks Island and would turn 

 up either this year or next. 



I had barely assimilated all these speculations when 

 one day there was great excitement at Herschel Island, 

 for a ship was coming in from the northeast. The keen 

 eyes at the mastheads of the various whalers were not 

 long in recognizing the Olga. When she came into our 

 harbor she had indeed a tale to tell. I was at the police 

 barracks when the Olga dropped anchor. Captain Klin- 

 kenberg came ashore at once with some members of his 

 crew, went to the police and requested that a statement by 

 himself and certain testimony of his crew should imme- 

 diately be taken under oath and placed on record. The 

 statements amounted roughly to this: 



Klinkenberg admitted having run off with the Olga the 

 previous year. He had known of an unguarded store- 

 ( house at Langton Bay, some three hundred miles east 

 of Herschel Island, where one of the whaling companies 

 had a considerable amount of food. He went there, took 

 the stores, broke up the house and put it on board his 

 ship. To the police he explained that his intention had 

 been to pay for all these things. He had then sailed to 

 Victoria Island. In the fall he had been off on a caribou 

 hunting trip and on returning to his ship he had found 

 that some of his men had commenced to make alcohol 

 out of flour and sugar. This he could not tolerate for 

 two reasons: he wanted DO drunkenness on the ship, and 

 he did not have the flour and sugar to spare. They were 

 needed for food. The ringleader in the distilling was 



