“The people of Krocker Land, Erickson, are an assured certainty. An unpeopled continent is as much a lusus naturae as an unfilled vacuum.”
“Certainly, Erickson. Didn’t you know that? Somebody must be provided to pocket the revenues from whale blubber and walrus ivory, not to mention the conservation bureau for glaciers, the output of icebergs, and the meteorological corps for the standardization of blizzards,” and Hopkins hid his face in his hands to stifle his screaming mirth.
But the Professor was neither ruffled nor amused; he went on oracularly:
“Erickson, the expectation is a little discouraging. Well I’ll say from your point of view it is almost impossible of belief that an unknown people exists in an unknown land near the North Pole. Now Stefansson’s discovery of the so-called Blond Eskimos has nothing to do with my confidence in this matter. It rests upon a broad deduction, an a priori necessary assumption. If the original Eden, the primitive center of dispersion, on the basis of the unity of the human race—if—”
Behind the Professor, whose labyrinthine locution, sounding higher and higher, was attracting some general attention among the guests of the hotel, stood Hopkins with two tumblers of water in his hands. He raised them suddenly above his head and dropped them. The crash was startling, and it was followed by an equally unexpected yell of pain from Hopkins, who apparently slipped, fell, seized the tablecloth and dragged to the floor a varied array of glassware and cutlery in a clatter that was deafening.
Confusion, explanations, reparation and a tumult of amusement followed, and in it disappeared the Professor’s voluminous harangue. It was never resumed.
Hopkins recovered his seriousness, and we attacked the novel project he had suggested, critically. All that next day we argued over it, thrashing it out with the illuminative references Goritz, the Professor and myself could make to our own experiences, Hopkins listening and pertinaciously sticking to his original suggestions. His plan grew more and more attractive; its reasonableness developed more and more under examination. Of course all four of us were now thoroughly excited; the lure of discovery almost maddened us, and the necromantic charm of the Professor’s amazing predictions, which we actually were unwilling to resist, instilled in us the wayward and fantastic hope that we were on the verge of a world-convulsing disclosure. We have not been disappointed.
The project finally took this shape: Hopkins and Goritz volunteered to bear all the expenses connected with the expedition; Hopkins would go to America, consult naval architects, and have a naphtha-propelled launch devised, combining, as to its hull, features of the “Fram” and “Roosevelt” in a diminutive way. Goritz would follow and buy the supplies, clothing and equipment. Then would come the Professor with instruments and books, and finally myself with three chosen men—Hopkins demanded they should be selected in America—who would be the captain, engineer and crew of the launch on its return to Point Barrow, and who would look for us the next summer. How preposterously sure we were that we would find land and game! But how ineffectually paltry after all were our expectations compared to the reality.
When everything was ready—the end of a year’s time was fixed for the date of our departure—we would have the launch set amidships on a whaler, and sail for Point Barrow, our prospective headquarters on the North American continent.
The last question Hopkins put to the Professor before we parted was about the mineral wealth of the new land, which had now incorporated its actuality with every sleeping and waking moment, seeming as certain as any other unvisited realm of Earth which we had seen on maps, but never visited.