50 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
information in the Arctic; he had been the first 
to make me feel the fascination of all this sound¬ 
ing and dredging, mapping out the bed of the 
ocean, outlining the continental shelf. These 
things and the search for new land in latitudes 
where man has never set foot before are what ap¬ 
peal to me. Call it love of adventure if you will; 
it seems to me the life that ought to appeal to 
any man with red blood in his veins, for as long 
as there is a square mile of the old earth’s sur¬ 
face that is unexplored, man will want to seek 
out that spot and find out all about it and bring 
back word of what he finds. Some people call 
the search for the North Pole a sporting event; 
to me it represents the unconquerable aspira¬ 
tion of mankind to attain an ideal. Our Kar - 
luk drift and its possibilities interested me 
keenly, for we were on the way to a vast region 
where man had never been; we were learning things 
about ocean currents and the influence of the winds 
and almost daily were bringing up strange speci¬ 
mens from the bottom of the sea. And 1 felt sure 
that come what might we would get back in safety 
to civilization. 
For several days we continued our offshore drift 
without change, bearing sometimes due north, 
sometimes easterly and then again northwesterly 
until by the ninth we were about thirty-five miles 
