stefansson-wrangel-09-38-004-002

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fuge intended to throw others off the track. Even the
captain of the Silver Wave, with whom they finally closed
for the trip, expected that his orders would be counter-
manded once, he had put to sea.

The young men loaded their ship with supplies -
food, ammunition and clothing - for a long period. They
had enough for one year at least; some said they had
enough for two. Particularly did they have a large
stock of ammunition. In one respect, so some people
thought, there was reason to believe that Wrangel Island
might after all be their destination, for one of the
young men was Frederick Maurer, remembered as one of the
survivors of Stefansson’s flagship, the Karluk, which had
been crushed in the ice in 1914 near Wrangel Island.

Maurer was a member of the party which had spent seven
months on the island before being taken off by the King
and Wing in September, 1914. It did not seem possible
that rich minerals could have been discovered on Wrangel
Island at that time without word leaking out in the seven-
year interval. Yet the people of Nome could not conceive
how anyone who had come so near to death by starvation
as had Maurer and his companions in 1914 could be induced
to return to Wrangel Island except under the stimulus of
rich stakes.

There was another element to the mystery: It shortly
became known that the expedition was sailing under orders