THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 269 



four years before they became the dehght of newspaper readers. 

 He has told me since that his first thought was that here was one 

 of the blond Eskimos, but his second thought was that he'd be 

 damned if he knew who or what I was. He was no farther along 

 in his thinking process when Captain Bernard said, "Don't you see 

 it's the Commander?" 



It is seldom in real life that people "register" astonishment or 

 any other feeling in a way at all resembling the movies, but I have 

 never seen nor can I imagine better movie acting than Levi's aston- 

 ishment. He had already put the gun aside, otherwise he would 

 have dropped it; but the ducks in his hand he actually dropped on 

 the floor. After staring at me he almost collapsed upon a bench 

 without saying a word. I have heard of people's eyes "sticking 

 out of their heads" with fear or surprise. Without saying that 

 Levi's actually did, I will say it seemed to me they did. 



There was a special reason for Levi's being rather more startled 

 than the others. He had been on the expedition their guide and 

 philosopher as to all northern things. He had been a whaler around 

 Herschel Island and in various parts of the Arctic for twenty 

 years and was looked up to by members of the Sachs party as wise 

 beyond any of them. They all knew, each on his own account, 

 that my companions and I must be dead; but even at that, Levi had 

 taken frequent occasion to explain and enlarge upon the certainty. 

 He was in truth, as he said himself, an old friend of mine; but he 

 had seen no reason why affection or any weakness should blind 

 him to facts. In addition to explaining that it was not possible 

 we could ever have reached Banks Island alive, he had also ex- 

 plained that we could not have lived there even had we been able 

 to land. He had warned that it was "all storybook stuff" about 

 any white man being able to live in the Arctic, and especially on 

 Banks Island, without help from Eskimos. Even the Eskimos 

 could not live on Banks Island, for had he not himself years before 

 seen traces of them there and were they not absent now, and had 

 they not always been absent when anybody came to the island? 

 These Eskimos had come on a furtive visit from another island 

 (Victoria Island) and had not stayed because the country was a 

 difficult one even for them. 



Of course this was ordinary whaler lore, partly intuition and 

 partly picked up from the Alaska Eskimos whom they carry in 

 their crews; but it amounted to a body of truth with Levi and the 

 crew of the Sachs, with the partial exception of Wilkins, as we 

 shall see later. But the broadest-minded scientist was never more 



