Karluk

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High above the Arctic Circle, two men lie huddled in a blizzard-blown tent, with the decaying corpse of a comrade they haven't had the heart to drag outside for the foxes to eat. Sailing north with Stefansson, the celebrated explorer, they sailed straight into a frigid hell. Abandoned by their leader, ill-equipped, untrained and without provisions, the expedition has already spent six months marooned on drifting ice. Now at long last they've reached land - but no land was ever bleaker. By the time help finally arrives, eleven young men will be dead; the rest reduced to near-animal degradation. A young schoolteacher in 1913 when he signed up with Stefansson's expedition, William Laird McKinlay would soon learn how cruelly were the myths of heroism which had once inspired him. His unsparing account of unbearable suffering and of the bloody-minded obstinacy that saw the survivors through makes this book unique in the true-life literature of exploration.