stefansson-wrangel-09-25-005-013

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- 13 -

only on the distant mountains, and that "we have a good outfit."

The Silver Wave sailed away from Wrangell Island after
hurried unloading that took only a few hours. We did not hear anything from
the party that winter and we did not expect to. They could have crossed the
hundred miles of ice to the Siberian mainland but we had agreed that they were
not to do this, for there would be no point in it from our side and it would
only emphasize to the Russians or the Japanese, whichever might be in control
on the mainland, that Wrangell Island was being occupied. We hoped the
world would forget all about us and that the Russians and Japanese had never
heard about us at all.

We did expect to communicate with the party the summer of
1922. But the arguments for the value of Wrangell Island, which seemed so
lucid and convincing to me, produced little effect when I presented them at
Ottawa. Part of the trouble was that there had been a change of government
and that the work of converting a Cabinet had to be done all over again.
According to the theories held by the party on Wrangell and by myself, they
were quite safe. Still, I tried my best to get money from the Government
to send in a supply ship, for there were the possibilities of illness and
accident. I had spent the previous year all the money I had and during the
current winter I had been paying into a bank wages for the men on the island.
This had taken my income and, as I had no property to sell or pledge, I was
powerless. I thought from day to day that the Government would surely do
something, but finally it was getting so late that I went in desperation to
a personal friend with a plea of life and death and borrowed three thousand
dollars without security. This enabled me to charter the Teddy Bear, under
command of an old acquaintance, Captain Joseph Bernard. She made a faithful
attempt to get in to Wrangell Island but was handicapped by starting a month

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