OBSERVATIONS AT THE POLE—METEOROLOGICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA—SINGULAR STABILITY AND UNIFORMITY OF THE THERMOMETER AND BAROMETER—A SPOT WHERE ONE'S SHADOW IS THE SAME LENGTH EACH HOUR OF THE TWENTY-FOUR—EIGHT POLAR ALTITUDES OF THE SUN

XX
Full and Final Proofs of the Attainment

Looking about me, after the first satisfactory observation, I viewed the vacant expanse. The first realization of actual victory, of reaching my lifetime's goal, set my heart throbbing violently and my brain aglow. I felt the glory which the prophet feels in his vision, with which the poet thrills in his dream. About the frozen plains my imagination evoked aspects of grandeur. I saw silver and crystal palaces, such as were never built by man, with turrets flaunting "pinions glorious, golden." The shifting mirages seemed like the ghosts of dead armies, magnified and transfigured, huge and spectral, moving along the horizon and bearing the wind-tossed phantoms of golden blood-stained banners.

The low beating of the wind assumed the throb of martial music. Bewildered, I realized all that I had suffered, all the pain of fasting, all the anguish of long weariness, and I felt that this was my reward. I had scaled the world, and I stood at the Pole!

By a long and consecutive series of observations and mental tabulations of various sorts on our journey northward, continuing here, I knew, beyond peradventure of doubt, that I was at a spot which was as near as possible, by usual methods of determination, five hundred and twenty miles from Svartevoeg, a spot toward which men had striven for more than three centuries—a spot known as the North Pole, and where I stood first of white men. In my own achievement I felt, that dizzy moment, that all the heroic souls who had braved the rigors of the Arctic region found their own hopes' fulfilment. I had realized their dream. I had culminated with success the efforts of all the brave men who had failed before me. I had finally justified their sacrifices, their very death; I had proven to humanity humanity's supreme triumph over a hostile, death-dealing Nature. It seemed that the souls of these dead exulted with me, and that in some sub-strata of the air, in notes more subtle than the softest notes of music, they sang a pÆan in the spirit with me.

We had reached our destination. My relief was indescribable. The prize of an international marathon was ours. Pinning the Stars and Stripes to a tent-pole, I asserted the achievement in the name of the ninety millions of countrymen who swear fealty to that flag. And I felt a pride as I gazed at the white-and-crimson barred pinion, a pride which the claim of no second victor has ever taken from me.

My mental intoxication did not interfere with the routine work which was now necessary. Having reached the goal, it was imperative that all scientific observations be made as carefully as possible, as quickly as possible. To the taking of these I set myself at once, while my companions began the routine work of unloading the sledges and building an igloo.

Our course when arriving at the Pole, as near as it was possible to determine, was on the ninety-seventh meridian. The day was April 21, 1908. It was local noon. The sun was 11° 55 above the magnetic northern horizon. My shadow, a dark purple-blue streak with ill-defined edges, measured twenty-six feet in length. The tent pole, marked as a measuring stick, was pushed into the snow, leaving six feet above the surface. This gave a shadow twenty-eight feet long.

Several sextant observations gave a latitude a few seconds below 90°, which, because of unknown refraction and uncertain accuracy of time, was placed at 90°. (Other observations on the next day gave similar results, although we shifted camp four miles toward magnetic south.) A broken hand-axe was tied to the end of a life-line; this was lowered through a fresh break in the ice, and the angle which it made with the surface indicated a drift toward Greenland. The temperature, gauged by a spirit thermometer, was 37.7°, F. The mercury thermometer indicated -36°. The atmospheric pressure by the aneroid barometer was at 29.83. It was falling, and indicated a coming change in the weather. The wind was very light, and had veered from northeast to south, according to the compass card.

The sky was almost clear, of a dark purple blue, with a pearly ice-blink or silver reflection extending east, and a smoky water-sky west, in darkened, ill-defined streaks, indicating continuous ice or land toward Bering Sea, and an active pack, with some open water, toward Spitzbergen. To the north and south were wine-colored gold-shot clouds, flung in long banners, with ragged-pointed ends along the horizon. The ice about was nearly the same as it had been continuously since leaving the eighty-eighth parallel. It was slightly more active, and showed, by news cracks and oversliding, young ice signs of recent disturbance.

The field upon which we camped was about three miles long and two miles wide. Measured at a new crevasse, the ice was sixteen feet thick. The tallest hummock measured twenty-eight feet above water. The snow lay in fine feathery crystals, with no surface crust. About three inches below the soft snow was a sub-surface crust strong enough to carry the bodily weight. Below this were other successive crusts, and a porous snow in coarse crystals, with a total depth of about fifteen inches.

Our igloo was built near one edge in the lee of an old hummock about fifteen feet high. Here a recent bank of drift snow offered just the right kind of material from which to cut building blocks. While a shelter was thus being walled, I moved about constantly to read my instruments and to study carefully the local environment.

In a geographic sense we had now arrived at a point where all meridians meet. The longitude, therefore, was zero. Time was a negative problem. There being no longitude, there can be no time. The hour lines of Greenwich, of New York, of Peking, and of all the world here run together. Figuratively, if this position is the pin-point of the earth's axis, it is possible to have all meridians under one foot, and therefore it should be possible to step from midnight to midday, from the time of San Francisco to that of Paris, from one side of the globe to the other, as time is measured.

Here there is but one day and but one night in each year, but the night of six months is relieved by about one hundred days of continuous twilight. Geographically, there was here but one direction. It was south on every line of the dial of longitude—north, east and west had vanished. We had reached a point where true direction became a paradox and a puzzle. It was south before us, south behind us, and south on every side. But the compass, pointing to the magnetic Pole along the ninety-seventh meridian, was as useful as ever. (To avoid statements easily misunderstood, all our directions about the Pole will be given as taken from the compass, and without reference to the geographer's anomaly of its being south in every direction.)

Taking advantage of our brief stay, the boys set up the ice-axe and drying sticks, and hung upon them their perspiration-wetted and frosted furs to dry. Hanging out wet clothes and an American flag at the North Pole seemed an amusing incongruity.

The puzzled standpoint of my Eskimos was amusing. They tried hard to appreciate the advantages of finding this suppositious "tigi shu" (big nail), but actually here, they could not, even from a sense of deference to me and my judgment, entirely hide their feeling of disappointment.

On the advance I had told them that an actual "big nail" would not be found—only the point where it ought to be. But I think they really hoped that if it had actually disappeared they should find that it had come back into place after all!

In building our igloo the boys frequently looked about expectantly. Often they ceased cutting snow-blocks and rose to a hummock to search the horizon for something which, to their idea, must mark this important spot, for which we had struggled against hope and all the dictates of personal comforts. At each breathing spell their eager eyes picked some sky sign which to them meant land or water, or the play of some god of land or sea. The naive and sincere interest which the Eskimos on occasions feel in the mystery of the spirit-world gives them an imaginative appreciation of nature often in excess of that of the more material and skeptical Caucasian.

Arriving at the mysterious place where, they felt, something should happen, their imagination now forced an expression of disappointment. In a high-keyed condition, all their superstitions recurred to them with startling reality.

In one place the rising vapor proved to be the breath of the great submarine god—the "Ko-Koyah." In another place, a motionless little cloud marked the land in which dwelt the "Turnah-huch-suak," the great Land God, and the air spirits were represented by the different winds, with sex relations.

Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook, with the astuteness of the aborigine, who reads Nature as a book, were sharp enough to note that the high air currents did not correspond to surface currents; for, although the wind was blowing homeward, and changed its force and direction, a few high clouds moved persistently in a different direction.

This, to them, indicated a warfare among the air spirits. The ice and snow were also animated. To them the whole world presented a rivalry of conflicting spirits which offered never-ending topics of conversation.

As the foot pressed the snow, its softness, its rebound, or its metallic ring indicated sentiments of friendliness or hostility. The ice, by its color, movement or noise, spoke the humor of its animation, or that of the supposed life of the restless sea beneath it. In interpreting these spirit signs, the two expressed considerable difference of opinion. Ah-we-lah saw dramatic situations and became almost hysterical with excitement; E-tuk-i-shook saw only a monotone of the normal play of life. Such was the trend of interest and conversation as the building of the igloos was completed.

Contrary to our usual custom, the dogs had been allowed to rest in their traces attached to the sleds. Their usual malicious inquisitiveness exhausted, they were too tired to examine the sleds to steal food. But now, as the house was completed, holes were chipped with a knife in ice-shoulders, through which part of a trace was passed, and each team was thus securely fastened to a ring cut in ice-blocks. Then each dog was given a double ration of pemmican. Their pleasure was expressed by an extra twist of the friendly tails and an extra note of gladness from long-contracted stomachs. Finishing their meal, they curled up and warmed the snow, from which they took an occasional bite to furnish liquid for their gastric economy. Almost two days of rest followed, and this was the canine celebration of the Polar attainment.

We withdrew to the inside of the dome of snow-blocks, pulled in a block to close the doors, spread out our bags as beds on the platform of leveled snow, pulled off boots and trousers, and slipped half-length into the bristling reindeer furs. We then discussed, with chummy congratulations, the success of our long drive to the world's end.

While thus engaged, the little Juel stove piped the cheer of the pleasure of ice-water, soon to quench our chronic thirst. In the meantime, Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook pressed farther and farther into their bags, pulled over the hoods, and closed their eyes to an overpowering fatigue. But my lids did not easily close. I watched the fire. More ice went into the kettle. With the satisfaction of an ambition fulfilled, I peeped out occasionally through the pole-punched port, and noted the horizon glittering with gold and purple.

Quivers of self-satisfying joy ran up my spine and relieved the frosty mental bleach of the long-delayed Polar anticipation.

In due time we drank, with grateful satisfaction, large quantities of ice-water, which was more delicious than any wine. A pemmican soup, flavored with musk ox tenderloins, steaming with heat—a luxury seldom enjoyed in our camps—next went down with warming, satisfying gulps. This was followed by a few strips of frozen fresh meat, then by a block of pemmican. Later, a few squares of musk ox suet gave the taste of sweets to round up our meal. Last of all, three cups of tea spread the chronic stomach-folds, after which we reveled in the sense of fulness of the best meal of many weeks.

With full stomachs and the satisfaction of a worthy task well performed, we rested.

We had reached the zenith of man's Ultima Thule, which had been sought for more than three centuries. In comfortable berths of snow we tried to sleep, turning with the earth on its northern axis.

But sleep for me was impossible. At six o'clock, or six hours after our arrival at local noon, I arose, went out of the igloo, and took a double set of observations. Returning, I did some figuring, lay down on my bag, and at ten o'clock, or four hours later, leaving Ah-we-lah to guard the camp and dogs, E-tuk-i-shook joined me to make a tent camp about four miles to the magnetic south. My object was to have a slightly different position for subsequent observations.

Placing our tent, bags and camp equipment on a sled, we pushed it over the ice field, crossed a narrow lead sheeted with young ice, and moved on to another field which seemed to have much greater dimensions. We erected the tent not quite two hours later, in time for a midnight observation. These sextant readings of the sun's altitude were continued for the next twenty-four hours.

In the idle times between observations, I went over to a new break between the field on which we were camped and that on which Ah-we-lah guarded the dogs. Here the newly-formed sheets of ice slid over each other as the great, ponderous fields stirred to and fro. A peculiar noise, like that of a crying child, arose. It came seemingly from everywhere, intermittently, in successive crying spells. Lying down, and putting my fur-cushioned ear to the edge of the old ice, I heard a distant thundering noise, the reverberations of the moving, grinding pack, which, by its wind-driven sweep, was drifting over the unseen seas of mystery. In an effort to locate the cry, I searched diligently along the lead. I came to a spot where two tiny pieces of ice served as a mouthpiece. About every fifteen seconds there were two or three sharp, successive cries. With the ice-axe I detached one. The cries stopped; but other cries were heard further along the line.

The time for observations was at hand, and I returned to take up the sextant. Returning later to the lead, to watch the seas breathe, the cry seemed stilled. The thin ice-sheets were cemented together, and in an open space nearby I had an opportunity to study the making and breaking of the polar ice.

That tiny film of ice which voiced the baby cries spreads the world's most irresistible power. In its making we have the nucleus for the origin of the polar pack, that great moving crust of the earth which crunches ships, grinds rocks, and sweeps mountains into the sea. Beginning as a mere microscopic crystal, successive crystals, by their affinity for each other, unite to make a disc. These discs, by the same law of cohesion, assemble and unite. Now the thin sheet, the first sea ice, is complete, and either rests to make the great field of ice, or spreads from floe to floe and from field to field, thus spreading, bridging and mending the great moving masses which cover the mid-polar basin.

Another law of nature was solved by a similar insignificant incident. In spreading our things out to air and dry (for things will dry in wind and sun, even at a very low temperature), two pieces of canvas were thrown on a hummock. It was a white canvas sled-cover and a black strip of canvas, in which the boat fittings were wrapped. When these strips of canvas were lifted it was found that under the part of the black canvas, resting on a slope at right angles to the sun, the snow had melted and recongealed. Under the white canvas the snow had not changed. The temperature was -41°; we had felt no heat, but this black canvas had absorbed enough heat from a feeble sun to melt the snow beneath it. This little lesson in physics began to interest me, and on the return many similar experiments were made. As the long, tedious marches were made, I asked myself the questions: Why is snow white? Why is the sky blue? And why does black burn snow when white does not?

Little by little, in the long drive of monotony, satisfactory answers came to these questions. Thus, in seeking abstract knowledge, the law of radiation was thoroughly examined. In doing this, there came to me slowly the solution of various problems of animal life, and eventually there was uncovered what to me proved a startling revelation in the incidents that led up to animal coloring in the Arctic. For here I found that the creatures' fur and feathers were colored in accord with their needs of absorbing external heat or of conserving internal heat. The facts here indicated will be presented later, when we deal with the snow-fitted creatures at close range.

One of the impressions which I carried with me of this night march was that the sun seemed low—lower, indeed, than that of midday, which, in reality, was not true, for the observations placed it nine minutes higher. This was an indication of the force of habit. In the northward march we had noted a considerable relative difference in the height of the night sun and that of the day. Although this difference had vanished now, the mind at times refused to grasp the remarkable change.[16]

At the Pole I was impressed by a peculiar uniformity in the temperature of the atmosphere throughout the twenty-four hours, and also by a strange monotone in color and light of sea and sky. I had begun to observe this as I approached the boreal center. The strange equability of light and color, of humidity and of air temperatures extended an area one hundred miles about the Pole. This was noted both on my coming and going over this district.

Approaching the Pole, and as the night sun gradually lifted, an increasing equalization of the temperature of night and day followed. Three hundred miles from the Pole the thermometer at night had been from 10° to 20° lower than during the day. There the shivering chill of midnight made a strong contrast to the burning, heatless glitter of midday. At the Pole the thermometer did not rise or fall appreciably for certain fixed hours of the day or night, but remained almost uniform during the entire twenty-four hours.

This, to a less notable extent, was true also of the barometer. Farther south there had been a difference in the day and night range of the barometer. Here, although the night winds continued more actively than those of the day, the barometer was less variable than at any time on my journey.

At the Pole the tendency of change in force and direction of air currents, observed farther south, for morning and evening periods, was no longer noted. But when strong winds brushed the pack, a good deal of the Polar equalization gave place to a radical difference, giving a period for high and low temperatures; which period, however, did not correspond to the usual hours of day or night. The winds, therefore, seemed to carry to us the sub-Polar inequality of atmospheric variation in temperature and pressure. Many of the facts bearing upon this problem were not learned until later. Subsequently, I learned, also, that strong winds often disturb the Polar atmospheric sameness; but all is given here because of the striking impression which it made upon me at this time.

In the region about the Pole I observed that, although there were remarkable and beauteous color blendings in the sky, the intense contrasts and the spectacular display of cloud effects, seen in more southern regions, were absent.

A color suffusion is common throughout the entire Arctic zone. Light, pouring from the low-lying sun, is reflected from the ice in an indescribable blaze. From millions of ice slopes, with millions and millions of tiny reflecting surfaces, each one a mirror, some large, some smaller than specks of diamond dust, this light is sent back in different directions in burning waves to the sky. A liquid light seems forced back from the sky into every tiny crevice of this bejeweled wonderland. One color invariably predominates at a time. Sometimes the ice and air and sky are suffused with a hue of rose, again of orange, again of a light alloyed yellow, again blue; and, as we get farther north, more dominantly purple. Farther south, in our journey northward, we had viewed color effects in reality incomparably more beautiful than those in the regions about the Pole. The sun, farther south, in rising and setting, and with limitless changes of polarized and refracted light, passing through strata of atmosphere of varying depths of different density, produces kaleidoscopic changes of burning color.

At the Pole there were sunbursts, but because of the slight change in the sun's dip to the horizon, the prevailing light was invariably in shades running to purple. At first my imagination evoked a more glowing wonder than in reality existed; as the hours wore on, and as the wants of my body asserted themselves, I began to see the vacant spaces with a disillusionizing eye.

The set of observations given here, taken every six hours, from noon on April 21 to midnight on April 22, 1908, fixed our position with reasonable certainty.

These figures do not give the exact position for the normal spiral ascent of the sun, which is about fifty seconds for each hour, or five minutes for each six hours; but the uncertainties of error by refraction and ice-drift do not permit such accuracy of observations. These figures are submitted, therefore, not to establish the pin-point accuracy of our position, but to show that we had approximately reached a spot where the sun, throughout the twenty-four hours, circled the heavens in a line nearly parallel to the horizon.

With the use of the sextant, the artificial horizon, pocket chronometers, and the usual instruments and methods of explorers, our observations were continued and our positions were fixed with the most painstakingly careful safeguards possible against inaccuracy. The value of all such observations as proof of a Polar success, however, is open to such interpretation as the future may determine. This applies, not only to me, but to anyone who bases any claim upon them.

To me there were many seemingly insignificant facts noted in our northward progress which left the imprint of milestones. Our footprints marked a road ever onward into the unknown. Many of these almost unconscious reckonings took the form of playful impressions, and were not even at the time written down.

In the first press reports of my achievement there was not space to go into minute details, nor did the presentation of the subject permit an elaboration on all the data gathered. But now, in the light of a better perspective, it seems important that every possible phase of the minutest detail be presented. For only by a careful consideration of every phase of every phenomena en route can a true verdict be obtained upon this widely discussed subject of Polar attainment.

And now, right here, I want you to consider carefully with me one thing which made me feel sure that we had reached the Pole. This is the subject of shadows—our own shadows on the snow-covered ice. A seemingly unimportant phenomenon which had often been a topic of discussion, and so commonplace that I only rarely referred to it in my notebooks, our own shadows on the snow-cushioned ice had told of northward movement, and ultimately proved to my satisfaction that the Pole had been reached.

In our northward progress—to explain my shadow observations from the beginning—for a long time after our start from Svartevoeg, our shadows did not perceptibly shorten or brighten, to my eyes. The natives, however, got from these shadows a never-ending variety of topics of conversation. They foretold storms, located game and read the story of home entanglements. Far from land, far from every sign of a cheering, solid earth, wandering with our shadows over the hopeless desolation of the moving seas of glitter, I, too, took a keen interest in the blue blots that represented our bodies. At noon, by comparison with later hours, they were sharp, short, of a dark, restful blue. At this time a thick atmosphere of crystals rested upon the ice pack, and when the sun sank the strongest purple rays could not penetrate the frosty haze. Long before the time for sunset, even on clear days, the sun was lost in low clouds of drifting needles.

After passing the eighty-eighth parallel there was a notable change in our shadows. The night shadow lengthened; the day shadow, by comparison, shortened. The boys saw in this something which they could not understand. The positive blue grew to a permanent purple, and the sharp outlines ran to vague, indeterminate edges.

Now at the Pole there was no longer any difference in length, color or sharpness of outline between the shadow of the day or night.

"What does it all mean?" they asked. The Eskimos looked with eager eyes at me to explain, but my vocabulary was not comprehensive enough to give them a really scientific explanation, and also my brain was too weary from the muscular poison of fatigue to frame words.

The shadows of midnight and those of midday were the same. The sun made a circle about the heavens in which the eye detected no difference in its height above the ice, either night or day. Throughout the twenty-four hours there was no perceptible rise or set in the sun's seeming movement. Now, at noon, the shadow represented in its length the altitude of the sun—about twelve degrees. At six o'clock it was the same. At midnight it was the same. At six o'clock in the morning it was the same.

A picture of the snowhouse and ourselves, taken at the same time and developed a year later, gives the same length of shadow. The compass pointed south. The night drop of the thermometer had vanished. Let us, for the sake of argument, grant that all our instrumental observations are wrong. Here is a condition of things in which I believed, and still believe, the eye, without instrumental assistance, places the sun at about the same height for every hour of the day and night. It is only on the earth's axis that such an observation is possible.

There was about us no land. No fixed point. Absolutely nothing upon which to rest the eye to give the sense of location or to judge distance.

Here everything moves. The sea breathes, and lifts the crust of ice which the wind stirs. The pack ever drifts in response to the pull of the air and the drive of the water. Even the sun, the only fixed dot in this stirring, restless world, where all you see is, without your seeing it, moving like a ship at sea, seems to have a rapid movement in a gold-flushed circle not far above endless fields of purple crystal; but that movement is never higher, never lower—always in the same fixed path. The instruments detect a slight spiral ascent, day after day, but the eye detects no change.

Although I had measured our shadows at times on the northward march, at the Pole these shadow notations were observed with the same care as the measured altitude of the sun by the sextant. A series was made on April 22, after E-tuk-i-shook and I had left Ah-we-lah in charge of our first camp at the Pole. We made a little circle for our feet in the snow. E-tuk-i-shook stood in the foot circle. At midnight the first line was cut in the snow to the end of his shadow, and then I struck a deep hole with the ice-axe. Every hour a similar line was drawn out from his foot. At the end of twenty-four hours, with the help of Ah-we-lah, a circle was circumscribed along the points, which marked the end of the shadow for each hour. The result is represented in the snow diagram on the next page.

In the northward march we did not stay up all of bedtime to play with shadow circles. But, at this time, to E-tuk-i-shook the thing had a spiritual interest. To me it was a part of the act of proving that the Pole had been attained. For only about the Pole, I argued, could all shadows be of equal length. Because of this combination of keen interests, we managed to find an excuse, even during sleep hours, to draw a line on our shadow circle.

Here, then, I felt, was an important observation placing me with fair accuracy at the Pole, and, unlike all other observations, it was not based on the impossible dreams of absolutely accurate time or sure corrections for refraction.

At the place where E-tuk-i-shook and I camped, four miles south of where I had left Ah-we-lah with the dogs, only two big ice hummocks were in sight. There were more spaces of open water than at our first camp. After a midnight observation—of April 22—we returned to camp. When the dogs saw us approaching in the distance they rose, and a chorus of howls rang over the regions of the Pole—regions where dogs had never howled before. All the scientific work being finished, we began hastily to make final preparations for departure.

We had spent two days about the North Pole. After the first thrills of victory, the glamor wore away as we rested and worked. Although I tried to do so, I could get no sensation of novelty as we pitched our last belongings on the sleds. The intoxication of success had gone. I suppose intense emotions are invariably followed by reactions. Hungry, mentally and physically exhausted, a sense of the utter uselessness of this thing, of the empty reward of my endurance, followed my exhilaration. I had grasped my ignus fatuus. It is a misfortune for any man when his ignus fatuus fails to elude him.

During those last hours I asked myself why this place had so aroused an enthusiasm long-lasting through self-sacrificing years; why, for so many centuries, men had sought this elusive spot? What a futile thing, I thought, to die for! How tragically useless all those heroic efforts—efforts, in themselves, a travesty, an ironic satire, on much vainglorious human aspiration and endeavor! I thought of the enthusiasm of the people who read of the spectacular efforts of men to reach this vacant silver-shining goal of death. I thought, too, in that hour, of the many men of science who were devoting their lives to the study of germs, the making of toxins; to the saving of men from the grip of disease—men who often lost their own lives in their experiments; whose world and work existed in unpicturesque laboratories, and for whom the laudations of people never rise. It occurred to me—and I felt the bitterness of tears in my soul—that it is often the showy and futile deeds of men which men praise; and that, after all, the only work worth while, the only value of a human being's efforts, lie in deeds whereby humanity benefits. Such work as noble bands of women accomplish who go into the slums of great cities, who nurse the sick, who teach the ignorant, who engage in social service humbly, patiently, unexpectant of any reward! Such work as does the scientist who studies the depredations of malignant germs, who straightens the body of the crippled child, who precipitates a toxin which cleanses the blood of a frightful and loathsome disease!

As my eye sought the silver and purple desert about me for some stable object upon which to fasten itself, I experienced an abject abandon, an intolerable loneliness. With my two companions I could not converse; in my thoughts and emotions they could not share. I was alone. I was victorious. But how desolate, how dreadful was this victory! About us was no life, no spot to relieve the monotony of frost. We were the only pulsating creatures in a dead world of ice.

A wild eagerness to get back to land seized me. It seemed as though some new terror had arisen from the icy waters. Something huge, something baneful ... invisible ... yet whose terror-inspiring, burning eyes I felt ... the master genii of the goal, perhaps ... some vague, terrible, disembodied spirit force, condemned for some unimaginable sin to solitary prisonment here at the top of the world, and who wove its malignant, awful spell, and had lured men on for centuries to their destruction.... The desolation of the place was such that it was almost palpable; it was a thing I felt I must touch and see. My companions felt the heavy load of it upon them, and from the few words I overheard I knew they were eagerly picturing to themselves the simple joys of existence at Etah and Annoatok. I remember that to me came pictures of my Long Island home. All this arose, naturally enough, from the reaction following the strain of striving so long and so fiercely after the goal, combined with the sense of the great and actual peril of our situation. But what a cheerless spot this was, to have aroused the ambition of man for so many ages!

There came forcibly, too, the thought that although the Pole was discovered, it was not essentially discovered, that it could be discovered, in the eyes of the world, unless we could return to civilization and tell what we had done. Should we be lost in these wastes or should we be frozen to death, or buried in the snow, or drowned in a crevasse, it would never be known that we had been here. It was, therefore, as vitally necessary to get back in touch with human life, with our report, as it had been to get to the Pole.

Before leaving, I enclosed a note, written on the previous day, in a metallic tube. This I buried in the surface of the Polar snows. I knew, of course, that this would not remain long at the spot, as the ice was in the grip of a slow-drifting movement. I felt the possibility of this slow movement was more important than if it remained stationary; for, if ever found in the south, the destination of the tube would indicate the ice drift from the Pole. The following is an exact copy of the original note, which is reproduced photographically on another page: