Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/300



RICE LATHAM was dead; and of the dead, says the adage, let nothing unless good be spoken. The adage rules—and should rule—those who return from the Arctic if it rules no others. For in the Arctic men are tried as nowhere else, and under the strangest conditions. Therefore, the deeds of the dead man, as told by his companions, were made to conform more closely to the requirements of decency and of honour than to the facts.

Accordingly it has been related in those records read by slippered people warm between their radiators and blazing log fires that Price Latham, the sportsman who led the Viborg party into the North, gave his life in a desperate attempt to reach the Canadian exploration ship Kadiack to bring relief to his starving companions. He died of exposure and exhaustion after suffering an accident. It added to 286