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out must, therefore, have been in their full strength and probably the dogs also.
Doubtless they had been carrying out my instructions to the effect that after
the middle of the second winter they might, if they desired, come out to
Siberia for the purpose of sending me news. Everyone knows that traveling over
sea ice has certain elements of danger at all times and notably during the mid-
winter when there are only a half dozen hours of twilight each day, making it
difficult to detect the treachery of the young ice. In the comments which I
gave to the press a day or two later I said, that, "It seems likely that one
afternoon the party traveled too far into the gathering twilight, walked on
unsafe ice and broke through". That this and not starvation was really the
end we now know from the Wrangell Island documents themselves.

A few days after the news story to the press I received a cable
from Mr. Noice which showed that my original interpretation had been at least
partly right.

"Nome, Alaska, Aug. 31-Sept. 4, 1923.

"Arrival last night Wednesday, Blackjack only survivor
stop buried Knight August twentieth stop Crawford, Galle,
Maurer left Wrangell January twenty eighth nineteen twenty
three stop believe entire party perished you notify
relatives of boys as you think best stop have left colony
of two Eskimo families two unmarried Eskimo men, in charge
of Wells stop equipped party for two years sojourn stop
game conditions Wrangell apparently excellent stop failure
of last expedition due to combination poor equipment and
inexperience."

¶ The reader already knows, as I did when I received
it, that this message gives in part a wrong impression;
as, for instance, where it implies that Knight and
Maurer were inexperienced.

The source of the trouble both with this private message and with the newspaper accounts of the tragedy will
appear in the next chapter which considers the history of the Wrangell Island
documents.