WE LAND ON WRANGELL ISLAND 103 
had not lost an hour on account of bad weather and 
had been inconvenienced for only one night by 
open water. As a consequence all hands were in 
need of a little rest. The dogs* too, were in a re¬ 
duced condition, for though they had had plenty to 
eat they had worked very hard and I wanted them 
to get what rest they could. 
For the plan I had been evolving to make my 
way across Long Strait from Wrangell Island to 
the coast of Siberia and seeking an opportunity of 
getting help for the party here on the island was 
now about to be put to the test. We were on land 
but were a long way from civilization; we need not 
drown but we might starve or freeze to death if we 
could not get help within a reasonable time. With 
the decline of the whaling industry there was no 
chance that any ship would come so far out from 
the mainland so that the only way to expect help to 
reach the party was to go after it. I would take 
only Kataktovick with me. He was sufficiently 
experienced in ice travel and inured to the hard¬ 
ships of life in the Arctic to know how to take -care 
of himself in the constantly recurring emergencies 
that menace the traveller on the ever-shifting sur¬ 
face of the sea-ice. On my trips with Peary I had 
had plenty of leads of open water to negotiate at 
this time of year but that was twelve or fifteen 
degrees north of where we now were. The later 
