Other men may possibly excel in special lines, but I am confident that as an all-round scientist, Whinney can give them all cards and spades. His fund of general information saved me thousands of dollars for he combined several people in one. For instance he knew quite enough about medicine to be our official doctor. As soon as he received the polar invitation he set about studying polar diseases, snow blindness, scurvy, chill-blains, frost-bite and so on. He was an expert photographer and got results from a 3-1/4 × 4-1/4 Kodak that surprised everybody including himself. He had also become keenly interested in radiography and brought a complete outfit aboard with him, using his own body as a spool upon which to coil his antennae until they could be rigged in a proper manner. Most men have two sides, but Whinney had at least a dozen. He combined many men in one. Way back in our college days I recall that he was taken on the Christmas trip of the Glee Club because he could play the banjo and he made the banjo-club because he could sing. He wasn't good at either but he averaged well. In addition to Swank and Whinney, I made another selection based on painstaking thought. I asked my life-long friend, Sydney Freemantle Frissell, to go along as recreationist and entertainer. Northern expeditions, especially through the long hours of the Arctic night are very dull affairs. Along about midnight, with morning three months away, the party is apt to die. Then is when a man like Frissell is invaluable. He has no brains whatever, but the most amazing vitality and can wake up any assembly by sheer audacity. I deliberated a long time as to whether to get Ed Wynn or Frissell, but finally decided in favor of Frizzy as he could come and Wynn couldn't. Needless to say, our Captain was the same staunch old oak-framed navigator, Ezra Triplett, who had gotten the Kawa into so many tight holes in the past. "What ship?" he asked when I put it up to him. "Kawa," I said. "Done, by thunder," he roared. Honest Ezra Triplett! Loyal, staunch friend, quaint, saturnine, creature that he is. "Doc," he said, "I'd like darn well to take one of my wives along. It's gonter be kinder lonely up there in the ice with all you boys off gunnin'." I smiled indulgently at the old man's foibles. "Which one do you want to take?" "The gal from Sausalito," he explained. "I ain't seen her in about a year, an' I'm gettin' kinder fed-up on ... you know ... Noo York." I nodded. "We'll have to keep it secret. You know I've absolutely forbidden it. She can join us at St. Johns and come aboard as wardrobe woman. No one must suspect that she is your wife." Triplett shifted his quid and slowly winked his false eye. "She ain't," he said. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: "Ants of the Ant-Arctic" by W.W. Waxman, F.O.B.] Chapter II _Our triumphant departure. A man missing. Wigmore's gallant embarkation. The Kawa herself. A new idea in construction. A few boresome details._