stefansson-wrangel-09-25-004-011

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or his mittens, and he was in a very pitiable plight. The most cheerful
one seemed to be Murray. The Doctor appeared all in. They were double-
tripping their stuff and Beuchat remained at the camp to look out for
their things. Chafe wanted him to return to Shipwreck Camp but Beuchat
would not. He knew we could not do anything for him there. The Doctor's
party was never seen or heard of again, nor any trace of them found.

That evening the Captain informed me that on the 12th of
the month I would leave with the two engineers, two firemen, Malloch, Chafe
and one sailor. We would have two sleds and would go to Wrangell Island.
The chief engineer was in command.

The next day we got everything ready. We had a lot of
collapsible iron stoves for burning driftwood and I wanted to take two of
them along to Wrangell Island so we could use wood for fuel. They weighed
only a few pounds. The Captain did not approve of this, however, and gave
us orders to burn kerosene instead of driftwood. We started with a light
load and we were to replenish our loads as we went along from the depots
which had been made at the Captain's orders at various intervals towards
land. I should judge we had nine hundred pounds to a sled and five dogs.
We had one Mannlicher rifle for each sled and three hundred rounds of
ammunition for each rifle. We also had one .22 caliber rifle with five
hundred rounds.

About nine o'clock February 12th the chief engineer's
party started from Shipwreck Camp towards shore with me in it. We tried to
follow the old trail made by the sledges when they were carrying out the
supplies which had been cached. in several depots at varying distances from
Shipwreck Camp along a line running towards shore. We found the trail
broken by ice movement and difficult or impossible to follow. In some