CHAPTER XVI 



WE ENTER UPON THE UNKNOWN OCEAN 



THE support party turned towards land at about the most 

 northerly point ever reached by ships in this region in sum- 

 mer. In winter no human beings of any race had been nearly 

 so far from the Alaska coast at this longitude. We were three men 

 alone on the edge of the unknown. To that extent the situation had 

 been duplicated before. Nansen and Johansen had been only two. 

 But they were using a tried method — they had food to carry them 

 nearly or quite to land, and would begin to live by hunting only as 

 the journey approached its end. But we were facing the unknown 

 part of the arctic sea with a method not only untried, but disbelieved 

 in by all but ourselves. My companions went about their work, 

 quietly, but I know they felt no less than I our dramatic position. 

 Were there animals in abundance waiting in the "polar ocean with- 

 out life"? Upon the answer depended not onl^ our lives and our 

 success, but a new view of the world we live in. 



Since the days before Magellan when men of equal standing could 

 argue about whether the world was flat or round there has been no 

 more fundamental geographic issue than the one we were about to 

 resolve: is the arctic region barren and in its nature hostile to life; 

 or is it hostile merely to life of a southern type and to men who live 

 like southerners, and friendly to any man or animal that will meet 

 the North on its own terms? We were staking our lives on the right- 

 ness of the unpopular side of this controversy. But we did not think 

 our lives were in serious danger, and so our resolve was not quite so 

 heroic as it sounds at first. Though Columbus had both numbers 

 and authorities against him, I doubt he ever lost much sleep for fear 

 of his ship plunging in the night over the western edge of a flat 

 world. 



Contrary to custom in polar narrative, we have so far said little 

 about a traveling outfit. This difference in narrative corresponds to 

 a difference in method. Other arctic explorers have relied for sub- 

 sistence exclusively or mainly on what they brought with them 

 when we relied mainly upon the resources of the country to be 

 traversed. Also there is little point in telling just what we took at 



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