OFF FOR WRANGELL ISLAND 
803 
blown offshore by the storm which began her drift 
in the September of the previous year. 
The party that left the Karluk on September 20, 
1918, as I have related before, consisted of Stef- 
ansson, Jenness, Wilkins, McConnell and the two 
Eskimo boys who had come aboard at Point Hope, 
Panyurak and Asatshak. They had with them 
two sledges and twelve dogs and equipment suffi¬ 
cient for the purpose which took them ashore, a two 
weeks’ caribou hunt in the country back of Beechey 
Point to provide the ship’s company with needed 
fresh meat for the winter, which it seemed likely 
would be spent with the ship frozen in at that point. 
It took them, McConnell said, two days to work 
their way in over the ice to one of the Jones Islands, 
about six miles northwest of Beechey Point. 
When they finally reached the island they found 
that the ice between them and the mainland was 
not safe for travelling, so while they were waiting 
for it to freeze more solidly, Stefansson decided to 
send him and Asatshak back to the Karluk for 
some things they wanted. 
That night, however, the storm that sent us 
drifting off shore came up and it was clearly not 
safe for them to go out on the sea-ice for the pres¬ 
ent. At the end of the three days’ storm the sea 
was clear on the outside and the ship was nowhere 
to be seen. Whether she was free at last and on 
