I protested that in that case it was useless, and both Stead and the French correspondent argued on my behalf. I had the paper in my breast pocket, and when the Rector gave a timorous consent to its publication, I left the room with deep words of thanks, and fairly ran out of the gate of the University lest he should change his mind, or the paper should be taken from me. It was published in The Daily Chronicle, and in hundreds of other papers.
A second blow befell me.
I had resumed acquaintanceship with Peter Freuchen and Mrs. Rasmussen, and at lunch one day she showed me a long letter which she had received from her husband, the explorer who, as I have told, had been Cook’s best friend, and had provided his dogs and Eskimos.
Mrs. Rasmussen, smiling, said: “You, of all men, would like to read that letter.”
“Alas that I do not know Danish!” I answered.
She marked one paragraph with a pencil, and said, “Perhaps I will let you copy out those words.”
It was Peter Freuchen who copied out the words in Danish, and Oscar Hansen who translated them into English, on a bit of paper which I tore out of my notebook.
They were a repudiation by Knud Rasmussen of his faith in Cook, and a direct suggestion that he was a knave and a liar.
These words were, of course, vitally interesting to me, and, indeed, to the world, for the fame and honor of Rasmussen were high, and his name had been used as the best guarantee of Cook’s claim. With Mrs. Rasmussen’s permission, I telegraphed her husband’s words in my message that day. They were immediately reproduced in all the Danish papers, and made a new sensation.
But my private sensation was far more emotional when, in crossing a square the following evening, a Danish journalist showed me a paper and said, “Have you seen this?”