THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 205 



plorers have gone so far as to shoot members of their party who have 

 infringed on the rations, and this with the full approval of govern- 

 ments at home and of lay readers of their narratives. I know a 

 case where a lifelong friendship turned into enmity in a night 

 because somebody got up in the dark and ate a quarter of a pound 

 of chocolate. Vv^e never felt any resentment towards each other 

 because of the quantities we used to eat, for it was always our 

 understanding that when the chocolate and rice and other things 

 were gone we should begin to live on seals, and it was merely a 

 question of a few days sooner or later, anyway, when that time 

 would come. It had come now, and he who had been free to eat 

 chocolate when he listed was doubly welcome to boiled seal flipper 

 or frozen liver or any other delicacy the sea afforded. 



Really we had for those ten days of voluntary rations been 

 backsliders from our own doctrine, of which we have since been more 

 faithful followers: "Do not let worry over to-morrow's breakfast 

 interfere with your appetite at dinner. The friendly Arctic will pro- 

 vide." 



Lest memory seem to have spread a rosy haze over events that 

 are five years past, I set down my diary entry of May 19, 1914. 

 It shows the relaxation that came upon us when we were definitely 

 through with the traditional method of arctic exploration, used as 

 a sort of introduction to our trip and abandoned for the method of 

 faith and reliance on nature which we have made our own. 



"Old times have come again and we are traveling in what I 

 consider comfort. I don't like the pemmican method of explora- 

 tion, though I concede as readily as any one its merits in its place. 

 Where, as inland in the Antarctic, there is no game, it is the only 

 method. But with it you are continually worrying whether the ra- 

 tions will last to your destination, and there is nothing more to be 

 hoped for than what you have with you at the start. This is the 

 unsupplemented pemmican method as used by most European ex- 

 plorers. But with a reasonable load of pemmican at the start 

 (cereals and malted milk are better) , and with guns and skill, you 

 can be sure in most latitudes of getting farther than your provisions 

 reach — how much farther is always a matter of hope and anticipa- 

 tion. It is thus a game as well as work. Science still has all her 

 power over you, and so does the desire for approbation of the 

 crowd or of the elect, and beyond that is the incentive of pure 

 sport — no sordid desire to best a rival but merely eagerness to show 

 what you and your method can do. And then there is the blessing 

 of not being 'on rations.' For nearly two weeks we were on rations, 



