CHAPTER I. 



THE NORTH POLE FOUND. 



"I have found the North Pole." 



From the deck of a Danish steamer as it touched at the Shetland Isles, 

 Dr. Frederick A. Cook sent this message over the world September i, 1909. 

 It meant that an American explorer had reached at once the summit of his 

 ambition and the summit of the world. It meant that a dozen other ex- 

 plorers saw their hopes blasted. It meant that a goal striven for since the 

 sixteenth century, a lure that had caused human bones and the wreckage of 

 ships to be strewn amid the ice of the desolate arctic, had been gained. 



More than a year had passed since Dr. Cook sailed from a point of com- 

 munication with the civilized world. Not a word had come from the lone 

 explorer who had plunged across the snows to possible doom. Then, on that 

 first day of September, the captain of the steamer Hans Egede, a Danish 

 craft, sent to the colonial office of his government this world-startling 

 telegram : 



"We have on board the American traveler. Dr. Cook, who reached the 

 North Pole April 21, 1908. Dr. Cook arrived at Upernivik (the northern- 

 most Danish settlement in Greenland, on an island off the west coast) in May 

 of 1909 from Cape York (in the northwest part of Greenland, on Baffin Bay). 



"The Eskimos of Cape York confirm Dr. Cook's story of his journey." 



That was all. Not a word to tell whether the explorer was well and sane, 

 or whether, after his terrible journey northward and southward, he might not 

 lie in his bunk, a raving maniac. But Dr. Cook's friends v.'ere speedily to 

 be reassured. There was another message, this time to a friend in New 

 York. It said: 



"Successful. Well. Address Copenhagen. 



(Signed) Fred." 



The friend, Mrs. Robert Pier Davidson, of 693 Bushwick avenue, Brook- 

 lyn, was the intimate associate of Mrs. Cook, wife of the explorer. From 



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