stefansson-wrangel-09-27-007

*See the appendix, post, for an abbreviation of Storkerson's own
story of this remarkable adventure.
52

miles, living by hunting the while and trying especially to determine the
direction of ice movement in that part of the ocean. During the seventh month
Storkerson, the leader, became ill. It was October, the worst part of the year
for travel over moving sea ice, and they were then three more than two hundred miles away from
land. But because they were complete masters of the technique of winter travel
over moving sea ice floes, they got ashore without trouble. The thrilling story of
the seven-month drift and the five hundred miles of sledge travel over broken
see ice in going forward and back between the composite floe and Alaska is told
in the appendix written by Storkerson for my "The Friendly Arctic." With the
exception of Storkerson and myself, there was no man living in 1921 not even Nanseu who
traveled as many miles on over moving sea ice or who had spent as many days upon it away from a ship
as had Knight. Of the great explorers of the past, Perry was the only one who
had excelled Knight's record.At twenty-eight he was in age, experience, physical strength an tempermental adaptability are ideal [mau] for
the work he so passonately desired to undertake.

Frederick Maurer I saw first in 1912 when he was on a whaling
ship wintering in the Arctic north of Canada; in 1913 he became a member of the
crew of our Karluk. He was with that ship when it sank some eighty miles north
east of Wrangell Island and was one of the men who spent more than six months
on Wrangell Island in 1914 after the shipwrecked men landed there. It was he
(as we have told in a previous article chapter) who raised the flag at the time British
rights to the island ware reaffirmed on July first 1^st 1914. Maurer was eager to
get back to any part of the Arctic but particularly eager to get back to Wrangell
Island, for his knowledge of various other parts of the North led him to consider
that as one of the richest and most desirable islands. Like Knight he was at the ideal age of twenty-eight and qualified by experience, temperment, and physical strength.
Shortly before I received the telegram from Ottawa saying that
the projected expedition had been postponed for at least a year, I had received
another wistful letter from Knight in which he said pathetically wistfully: "I have been away
from the Arctic nearly two years now, and it has been quite a long two years.”

We have told ina previous chapter that In 1921 it was reported in the press that the Japanese were