10 THENORTHPOLE 



Arctic chess-board. It was win this time or be for- 

 ever defeated. 



The lure of the North ! It is a strange and a power- 

 ful thing. More than once I have come back from 

 the great frozen spaces, battered and worn and baffled, 

 sometimes maimed, telling myself that I had made my 

 last journey thither, eager for the society of my kind, 

 the comforts of civilization and the peace and serenity 

 of home. But somehow, it was never many months 

 before the old restless feeling came over me. Civili- 

 zation began to lose its zest for me. I began to long 

 for the great white desolation, the battles with the ice 

 and the gales, the long, long arctic night, the long, 

 long arctic day, the handful of odd but faithful Eskimos 

 who had been my friends for years, the silence and 

 the vastness of the great, white lonely North. And 

 back I went accordingly, time after time, until, at 

 last, my dream of years came true. 



