“Was it sensible to expose yourself to such dangers?” was her only comment.

But the first opportunity that presented itself she did not fail to say to Erik: 

“I suppose that now you will do nothing more about this tiresome matter, since the Irishman is dead.”

What a difference there was between these cold criticisms and the letters full of sympathy and tenderness that Erik soon received from Noroe.

Vanda told him in what a state of anxiety she and her mother had passed these long months, how the travelers had been ever present in their thoughts, and how happy they were when they heard of their safe return.  If the expedition had not accomplished all that Erik hoped, they begged him not to worry himself too much about it.  He must know that if he never succeeded in finding his own family he had one in the poor Norwegian village, where he would be tenderly cared for like one of themselves.  Would he not soon come and see them, could he not stay with them one little month.  It was the sincere desire of his adopted mother and of his little sister Vanda, etc., etc.

The envelope also contained three pretty flowers, gathered on the borders of the fiord, and their perfume seemed to bring back vividly to Erik his gay and careless childhood.  Ah, how sweet these loving words were to his poor disappointed heart, and they enabled him to fulfill more easily the concluding duties appertaining to the expedition.  He hoped soon to be able to go and tell them all he felt.  The voyage of the “Alaska” had equaled in grandeur that of the “Vega.”  The name of Erik was everywhere associated with the glorious name of Nordenskiold.  The journals had a great deal to say about the new periplus.  The ships of all nations anchored at Stockholm united in doing honor to this national victor.  The learned societies came in a body to congratulate the commander and crew of the “Alaska.”  The public authorities proposed a national recompense for them.

All these praises were painful to Erik.  His conscience told him that the principal motive of this expedition on his part had been purely a personal one, and he felt scrupulous about accepting honors which appeared to him greatly exaggerated.  He therefore availed himself of the first opportunity to state frankly that he had gone to the polar seas to discover if possible the secret of his birth, and of the shipwreck of the “Cynthia,” that he had been unsuccessful in doing so.

The occasion was offered by a reporter of one of the principal newspapers of Stockholm, who presented himself on board of the “Alaska” and solicited the favor of a private interview with the young captain.  The object of this intelligent gazeteer, let us state briefly, was to extract from his victim the outlines of a biography which would cover one hundred lines.  He could not have fallen on a subject more willing to submit to vivisection.  Erik had been eager to tell the truth, and to proclaim to the world that