THE RESCUE FROM WRANGELL ISLAND 323 
we had started for Siberia—and three puppies. 
The King and Winge steamed towards Herald 
Island, as I have previously said, but though she 
kept alongshore for miles she was prevented by the 
ice-floes from getting very near and finally, to 
make sure not to be frozen in for the winter, Mr. 
Swenson decided to set his course for Nome. The 
weary and anxious Karluk survivors enjoyed the 
food that was hospitably placed before them and 
the opportunity to bathe and put on clean clothes. 
The beards that adorned their faces came off and it 
was a greatly transformed company that I observed 
from the deck of the Bear the next afternoon. 
We reached Nome on the Bear, September 13. 
Our arrival aroused great excitement, even though 
shipwrecked mariners from the Arctic are not al¬ 
together a novelty in Nome. The rescue was more 
than ordinarily a matter of local interest and pride 
because of the number of men and ships concerned 
in it that were well known all through that part of 
Alaska. 
The hospitality of the Alaskan is unstinted, as 
I had already had occasion to find out, but it seemed 
to me best to keep the men on board the Bear for 
a day or two, for in their reduced state they would 
be more than usually susceptible to contagious 
diseases. It would be the irony of fate for them 
to survive six months of semi-starvation and then 
