The Professor’s equanimity was restored when we met him in the diningroom at breakfast the following morning, and he most good-naturedly accepted professions of contrition at our mental obduracy. But it was the American who confounded him by his sudden determination and a precipitant proposition to “get away on the first tide.”
“Prof.,” he exclaimed clapping the smaller man on the shoulder with a cordial gaiety that shocked Goritz, “I’m willing to take the chance. It’s a big stake to win, though,” his whimsical smile propitiated the Professor completely. “I’m not buffaloed on all your talk about the tropical climate we’re likely to meet. Of course, I’ve looked into the matter a little, on my own hook, and just now the plan of action is something like this. These two good friends,” he waved his hands genially toward Goritz and myself, “know a good deal about zero temperatures, polar bears, walrus, starvation and ice floes; you have surveyed Spitzbergen, and as for myself—Well, honestly, I’m a tenderfoot but young, hardy, sound as a steel rail, a good shot, a prize rower, and once Prof., take it from me, I strangled a mad dog with these hands.”
Hopkins never looked handsomer than at that moment, his face burning with an expectant eagerness, the color rising to his temples beneath the waves of chestnut hair, his frame and figure like an Achilles.
The Professor nodded his approval and assent.
“We’ll make a strong quartette; quite enough for the jaunt. These big outfits are a blunder. I’ve always thought that was the mistake the English made. Plenty of dogs, rations and a few mouths go farther, with less strain and less risk. And another thing, friends,” he wheeled round from the Professor, and addressed us, “no big ship, no ‘Fram’, no ‘Roosevelt.’ We’ll get the stiffest and most flexible and biggest wooden naphtha launch that can be made; stock her; carry her up on a hired whaler from San Francisco, bunk at Point Barrow, pick our best chance through the leads in the open weather, and then with dogs, sleds, and kayaks, take to the main ice and scoot for the happy land of—Krocker! Eh?”
Goritz and I heard the extraordinary daredevil plan with consternation. It seemed the limit of foolishness, and absurdly ignorant. We waited for the inevitable crushing denunciation of such folly from the informed lips of the Professor. To our amazement the Professor grew radiant, seized Hopkins’ hands, shaking them vigorously, his pop-eyes starting out with the most amiable encouragement, while his beaming smile endorsed Hopkins’ lunacy with mad enthusiasm.
“Right, Mr. Hopkins! Right—the very thing. No reserve, no retreat, no store ship is necessary. I had convinced myself of the absolute propriety of just such a course of action, but I expected to find it a hopeless task to persuade anyone to believe me. Krocker Land will supply us with everything, and the ice course will be far more simple and easy than Nansen’s trip from 86° to Franz Josef Land, or Peary’s over North Greenland; a straight-away run with a few water breaks. No great hardships. At least,” and the Professor in a burst of audacious nonchalance knocked over a few glasses and a water carafe in his swinging ambulations, “none greater than the ordinary experiences of an Arctic traveler. I congratulate you, Mr. Hopkins, on your perspicacity—American shrewdness. Ah! American—what you call GAMENESS. Eh? Let me assure you that had you been a hardened, experienced North Pole explorer you would never have hit on this; NEVER. You’d have stuck to the old plans. And the only reason you are right now is that Krocker Land is an exceptional proposition, to be negotiated by exceptional methods. I promise you exceptional results.”
For a few moments Goritz and I were dumb with astonishment, and I think Goritz was almost choking with indignation. Somehow he suppressed his threatening outbreak and only muttered, “I suppose we will never want to come back—never need to?”
A ripple of comic commiseration crossed Hopkins’ face:
“Come now, Goritz. WHERE I COME BACK is just here,