CHAPTER XIX 
KATAKTOVICK AND I START TOR SIBERIA 
With our sledge loaded with supplies, which in¬ 
cluded forty-eight days’ food for ourselves and 
thirty for the dogs, we shook hands all round and 
Kataktovick and I were off on our journey to the 
Siberian coast. McKinlay accompanied us for a 
short distance along the way. It was a hundred 
and nine miles in an air line from the southernmost 
point of Wrangell Island across to Siberia, but 
first we must go around the shore of the island, and 
the journey across the ice, like all ice travel, would 
not be, to say the least, exactly in a straight line. 
To have gone along the shore to the northwest and 
on around the western end of the island would have 
cut off some distance but Kerdrillo had already cov¬ 
ered part of the coast that way and by going east 
and south I could look for traces of the missing 
parties in that direction. 
Shortly after McKinlay left us, about half a mile 
from the camp, we were assailed by increasing 
blasts of the northwest wind, which swirled the 
drifting snow about us and prevented our seeing 
more than a hundred yards. We followed the 
in 
