One late night McKinlay confided in the group that right before Stefansson had departed, he saw the expedition leader reading De Long’s logs and charts from the Jeannette. “He saw that most ships, 99 percent out of 100, in the ice north of Bering Strait are facing certain death, and for fear of losing his life he left the ship.” Hearing this, Beuchat—his face visibly flushed—blurted out, “We are lost. We don’t know where we are. Everything is hopeless.”
