At home they employ servants for such a menial task, and Fogarty, ''the unlettered man who had been brought along to serve his betters,'' admits he still finds ''pleasure in heating Lord Luton`s shaving water and in honing and stropping the razor.'' The Irishman is the best-drawn character in the book-not that he emerges as particularly multi-dimensional, but at least he is allowed a touch of ambiguity. The party drifts down the Mackenzie River aboard their tiny Sweet Afton, but instead of wintering at a fur trading post, they`re caught in the wilderness and spend the dark season inside a tiny cabin reciting Keats and learning how to shave themselves.
Michener gets his geography right, and his historic research is flawless. This allows Luton-at all times a certified twit-to proclaim sentiments such as this, when his nephew is dying of frostbite because he has insisted on walking through Arctic storms wearing rubber boots: ''I have a very queasy stomach when it comes to cutting off a man`s leg, especially a young man`s, but I shall do it if it needs being done!''
Three of the explorers die along the way. They travel 2,043 miles trying to find an all-British route into the Klondike, which is in Canadian territory but much more accessible through Alaska. It`s still ten degrees below freezing! But it feels like summer.'') The plot revolves around 23 months in the lives of Lord Evelyn Luton, ''the younger son of the redoubtable Lord Deal,'' and his four companions: Harry Carpenter (a veteran of the Afghan wars), Philip Henslow (Luton`s nephew), Trevor Blythe (a ''budding poet'') and Tim Fogarty, an Irish manservant. The plot is ponderously moved along by such arcane devices as rhetorical questions and stage directions, as in this typical paragraph about the Klondike gold rush: ''If the news of the strike could have such electric effect upon so many, why had it taken almost a full year to travel the relatively short distance from the Klondike to Seattle, less than thirteen hundred miles, as an eagle would fly? The explanation must be carefully noted, for it explains the tragic events that were about to destroy so many lives.'' The style is a melange of old-fashioned bodice-ripper (''When she heard these words she actually sucked in her breath and drew back: `You`re not thinking of trying that route are you?` '') and stagey bravado (''Fellows!
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