I went up to the central figure, whom I guessed to be Doctor Cook, introduced myself as an English press man, shook hands with him, and congratulated him on his heroic achievement.
He took my arm in a friendly way, and said, “Come and have some breakfast, young man.”
I sat next to him in the dining saloon of the Hans Egede, which was crowded with a strange-looking company of men and women, mostly in furs and oilskins, with their faces burned by sunlight on snow. The women were missionaries and the wives of missionaries, and their men folk wore unkempt beards.
I studied the appearance of Doctor Cook. He was not bearded, but had a well-shaven chin. He had a powerful face, with a rather heavy nose and wonderfully blue eyes. There was something queer about his eyes, I thought. They avoided a direct gaze. He seemed excited, laughed a good deal, talked volubly, and was restless with his hands, strong seaman’s hands. But I liked the look of him. He seemed to me typical of Anglo-Saxon explorers, hard, simple, true.
In response to my request for his “story,” he evaded a direct reply, until, later in the morning, the Danes and I pressed him to give us an hour in his cabin.
It was in the saloon, however, that he delivered himself, unwillingly, I thought, into our hands. As the two or three young Danes knew but little English, the interview became mainly a dialogue between Doctor Cook and myself. I had no suspicion of him, no faint shadow of a thought that all was not straightforward. Being vastly ignorant of Arctic exploration, I asked a number of simple questions to extract his narrative; and, to save myself trouble and get good “copy,” I asked very soon whether he would allow me to see his diary.
To my surprise, he replied with a strange defensive look that he had no diary. His papers had been put on a yacht belonging to a man named Whitney, who would take them to New York.
“When will he get there?” I asked.
“Next year,” said Doctor Cook.
“But surely,” I said, still without suspicion, “you have brought your journal with you? The essential papers?”