"Revelation"

A tribe of Eskimos gathered at Karnah, far North on the coast of Greenland. Fur clad, tallow-faced, they squatted in a ring. Before them all, the previously respected Eskimo Kudlooktoo confessed himself a murderer.

"I shot the white man Marvin," ran the confession of Eskimo, Kudlooktoo. "Seventeen years ago I shot him to save the life of my friend Inuhitsoq. Now I am a Christian. I have just learned to be a Christian. I confess."

The Eskimos, having heard Kudtooktoo's confession, shuffled off. He was a fool to confess, they thought. Except--what did it matter? The white man Marvin was dead, and the white man Peary who had brought him to the Arctic does not come to Greenland any more. What did it matter if Kudlooktoo had learned to be a Christian and confessed?

Loquacious, Kudlooktoo confessed not only to his tribe but (previously) to the missionary who converted him, Jens Olsen. Danish Jens Olsen naturally considered that after Kudlooktoo's public confession no secrecy attached to what he had confessed in private. Soon famed Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen knew all about it. He told Dr. Isaiah Bowman, director of the American Geographical Society in New York. For a year and more the secret has been leaking out among explorers that Professor Ross G. Marvin of Cornell, one of Admiral Peary's most trusted Arctic lieutenants, was murdered by the Eskimo Kudlooktoo.

One day last week the New York Times triple-column-headed a cablegram from Manhattan publisher George Palmer Putnam who had just discovered the secret of Professor Marvin's death while visiting Whale Sound in North Greenland. Times readers, well schooled to palpitate at Arctic news by the Times elaborate accounts of the Byrd and the Norge polar flights (TIME, May 17 and 24), were roused to a dignified excitement.

They read that Eskimo Kudlooktoo and his friend Eskimo Inukitsoq (nicknamed "Harrigan") were returning on April 10, 1909 with Professor Marvin from an expedition supporting Peary's dash for the Pole. According to Kudlooktoo, Marvin suddenly "sordlo ilisimajungnaersimasok" ["was like a sane man who for the moment was without the use of his faculties"]. Marvin, Kudlooktoo alleges, ordered Inukitsoq to get off the dog sledge, and proposed to leave him on the ice to die without food--all for no apparent reason. Kudlooktoo thereupon shot Marvin with a rifle, to save Inukitsoq, and the two Eskimos returned to Peary's base claiming that Marvin had been drowned.

On reading Publisher Putnam's "revelation," famed Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson said dryly last week:

"It has been a sort of tradition of Arctic exploration to suppress the truth in cases of this kind. There have been many similar tragedies. Those who knew the truth of them have usually kept it to themselves."

Legal authorities expressed the opinion that action cannot be taken against Kudlooktoo because the murder was committed "on the high seas" (in this case frozen into ice) in a portion of the world over which no court held jurisdiction at the time the murder was committed. None the less the U. S. State Department requested the Government of Denmark, to which Greenland now appertains, to "investigate" the slaying of the trusted aid of heroic Admiral Peary.

*Peary wrote of him: "Harrigan acquired this sobriquet on account of his ear for music. The crew used to be fond of singing that energetic Irish air which was popular for some years along Broadway and which concludes ungrammatically with the words 'Harrigan--that's me.'

"The Eskimo in question seemed fascinated by this song and in time learned those three words and practiced them with so much assiduity that he was ultimately able to sing them in a manner not wholly uncouth."