From this point our voyage northward through Behring Strait and into the Arctic Ocean, was without any incident worth recording. Our course after passing the strait, was a little east of north to avoid the ice, until we reached longitude 165 degrees West of Greenwich, and then north. Captain Ganoe often came into my cabin to while away an hour in conversation. His marked friendship seemed to increase with each visit. He always addressed me familiarly as Jack, and in these conversations he became more and more confidential, and revealed to me more and more of his inner life, his early hopes and subsequent disappointments. One evening after we had been at sea about four months, he came into my cabin looking unusually gloomy. After the customary salutation he lighted a cigar and fell into a brown study, not speaking to me for several minutes, when suddenly he said: "Jack, did you ever think what mere trifles sometimes change the whole course of a life-time? I often wonder at myself for being out here on this wild goose chase, with the certainty of loss of property, business, comfort and possibly life itself, searching for something I have no use for, and which at best if discovered, will only gratify an idle curiosity. And yet, this has been brought about by what was only a trifling incident. Have you ever thought of these strange effects which flow from trivial causes?" He spoke bitterly and I determined to take advantage of the opportunity to draw him out. I wanted to penetrate the inmost recesses of his being, and with this object in view I replied: "Yes, Captain, I have often thought of it and have realized it in my own experience. It sometimes seems little short of a miracle, that after years of wandering, I am now here with you. In my case I was not influenced by a mere trifle, but a stern necessity. I had absolutely nothing to lose, and I thought I might find something which, under the circumstances, would amply repay me for all the hardships and dangers I might have to encounter. But you were differently situated. You were independent. You had wealth, business and influential friends, while I had been robbed of my patrimony, and was thrown upon the world with nothing but my hands and brain to work with. My course was a necessity, but it is a mystery why you should abandon a profitable business and organize this expedition at such an enormous expenditure of labor and money, while you regard its avowed objects as matters of such little importance. Your course seems to involve a self-contradiction that I cannot comprehend."