One other slight shock disturbed my mental poise in this fortnight of sensation. It was when I read in the Politiken a challenge to a duel, publicly addressed to me by Norman Hansen, the poet and explorer. He was a tall man, six foot three or so in his socks, and very powerful. I am five-foot-six or so in my boots. If we met, I should die. I did not answer that challenge! But on the day when Doctor Cook left Copenhagen, with a wreath of roses round his bowler hat, and when I had done my job with him, the crowd which had gone down to the quayside to see the last of him, parted, and I found myself face to face with Norman Hansen.
Some one in the crowd said:
“When is that duel to be fought?”
Norman Hansen came toward me, and held out his hand, with a great jolly laugh.
“We will never fight with the sword,” he said, “but only with the pen!”
We didn’t even fight with the pen, for he lost all faith in Cook, and sometimes from northern altitudes I get kind and generous messages from him.
W. T. Stead maintained his belief in Cook until the University of Copenhagen formally rejected Cook’s claim and canceled his honorary degree, when the evidence of his own papers, which afterward arrived, and the story of his own Eskimos, left no shred of doubt in his favor.
Then I had a note from the great old journalist.
“I have lost and you have won,” he wrote, and after that used generous words which I need not publish.
Truly it was a queer, exciting incident in my journalistic life, and looking back upon it, I marvel at my luck.