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that if I still wanted Noice to go to Wrangell Island, he would find the money
to pay his expenses as far as Nome on the chance that by the time he got there I
would be able to raise the charter money in England. On my agreeing to this,
Taylor sent for Noice to proceed from New York by way of Toronto to Seattle where
he would take the passenger steamer on July 5th to be in Nome about the 15th.

Later Taylor cabled me for permission to sell to a newspaper syndicate arrange between the
Stefansson Arctic Exploration and Development Company and the North American News-
paper Alliance of New York an agreement by which the Alliance would pay our
company for three thousand dollars for a story to be written by Noice covering his trip
from Nome to Wrangell Island and back to Nome. I was reluctant to make this
arrangement, for I knew the syndicate Alliance would sell the despatch to one paper only in
each city. This would tend to make the competing papers in any given city
unfriendly to us and would interfere with our my main purpose, that of spreading a
correct knowledge of the arctic regions. But we were so hard up that I felt
myself forced to consent and the arrangement was entered into. Unfortunately, This proved to have
not only the unfortunate consequences which I feared but also others more
this which ought to be only a detail not worth mentioning in a book, turned out
painful and serious.
to be one of the most unfortunate turning points in the whole story.

Noice reached Nome about the middle of July. Up to that time point all
negotiations had been carried on by cable through the Lomen Brothers, but when
Noice appeared they considered rightly enough that he was our representative, so
they turned everything over to him. From the point of view of a man who was
already at his wits' ends how to get money enough for the supply ship, things
now took a very bad turn. For some reason the prices of everything in Nome went
up suddenly. We thought at the time that this was due to certain threats from the
Soviet Government which began to circulate through the newspapers of the world.
A despatch said to originate in Vladivostok reported that a Russian "gunboat”
was leaving there for Wrangell Island for the purpose of protecting this "Russian
territory" from "operations considered hostile to Russian interests." Another