stefansson-wrangel-09-32-078r

THE REPORT OF CAPTAIN JOSEPH BERNARD 355

expect him to do his best. The second reason that convinces us
he did all he dared (and therefore all that was safe) is that he
had an arrangement with us by which he would receive double his
charter fee if he succeeded in reaching the island.

Part of the feeling that Captain Bernard might have reached the
island in 1922 had he kept on trying until later in the season, came
from a press statement by Mr. Noice that he found evidence in
Knight’s diary that ships could have got through in October, 1922.
But unless this evidence may have been in the paragraphs erased
which no one but Mr. Noice has seen, Knight’s diary really shows
that he and his comrades gave up hope of a ship by the last week
in September, and that the hope never revived in their minds.
When there was open water near the island later, they saw in it
(so far as we can judge from Knight’s diary) no sign that a ship
could come—they evidently either considered the season too late
for a ship to be away from port in that part of the Arctic, or else
they supposed the open water they saw was only local—not ex-
tending far from the island. Probably they held both views. There
is, therefore, nothing in the records on the basis of which we can
rest the conclusion that Captain Bernard was wrong in turning
back when he did.