Knight was born in 1893, son of a Methodist minister from Oregon. He died on Wrangel Island in 1923 of scurvy, in company with Ada Blackjack.
p. 47, refers to Herschel Island Opera House: These fellows had drunk themselves out of acting jobs so they turned into whalers. With an opera house ready for ‘em here, they just naturally couldn’t hold back the talent.
p. 143: Stefansson, I soon learned, was a very thoughtful provider. He had left, for our use, a large number of books on a great variety of subjects. The Polar Bear’s library had been selected with intelligence and each of us found something to his taste. I never caught Charlie Thomsen reading one of J. M. Barrie’s plays! He fell fast asleep after two pages.
p. 255: None of us had started out from Cross Island prepared for such a long cruise. If we had, we would surely have brought more books. The five that had somehow crept into our luggage were hardly the ones I would have chosen, but, such as they were, we read and re-read them. There was a collection of Greek verse, with translations. I spent many weary hours trying to decipher the Greek tongue by match the English text against it. I knew about as much Greek as I did Eskimo, and my knowledge of that jargon was limited to the single word ‘pechuck’ which I used on all occasions. It never failed to give me the exact and necessary refinement of meaning.