stefansson-wrangel-09-32-082v

364 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

thought he had been justified, therefore, in not caviling at the
raised prices. This was necessary in order that he be able to
outfit rapidly, and justified because the lives in Wrangel Island
were in danger. He also said that he had believed that it was
British Government money he was spending, and that he might
have been more frugal if he had realized it was my money, or
money I had borrowed and would have to repay. (I had sent
him no information as to where the money came from.)

A final analysis shows that much of the increase in cost of
the expedition from the Lomen figures to the eventual total was
due to an increase in outfit on the basis of Mr. Noice’s quite legiti-
mate interpretation of my cables to him. Lomen Brothers feel
that Mr. Noice rather overestimates the effect on costs of various
causes believed in by him. They think that some figures which
he considered too high, but which he felt he had to pay, were really
normal prices.

I gathered both from Mr. Noice himself at this interview and
from other evidence later that he handled in an efficient and com-
mendable way the outfitting of the Donaldson and the voyage from
Alaska to Wrangel Island.

Mr. Noice told me that on his way back from Wrangel he had
read over all the papers he had recovered and that he had ques-
tioned Ada Blackjack carefully to bring out obscure details. His
view was that the documents and her information showed extreme
incompetence and lack of judgment on the part of the entire party
on the island. He thought that I was almost equally culpable in
not having been able to foresee that these men would be incompe-
tent. When I reminded him that, through long association in the
Arctic with Knight, I had never found him incompetent, and that,
both through personal knowledge and the report of his shipmates
of the Karluk, I knew Maurer to be an exceptionally good man,
his rebuttal was to the effect that whoever thought well of them
before must have been mistaken, as was easily seen by their mis-
management on Wrangel Island. Needless to say, this argument
from Mr. Noice did not convince me. Mr. Noice’s next point was
that, in view of the incompetence which he alleged, the outfit with
which the party landed had been inadequate. He thought that
with either himself in command or with me in command the outfit
would have been ample, so that this point resolved itself again