PREPARATIONS 15 



While trying to possess my soul in patience despite 

 the unjustified delay, there came the heaviest calamity 

 encountered in all my arctic work — the death of my 

 friend, Morris K. Jesup. Without his promised help 

 the future expedition seemed impossible. It may be 

 said with perfect truth that to him, more than to any 

 other one man, had been due the inception and the 

 continuance of the Peary Arctic Club, and the success 

 of the work thus far. In him we lost not only a man 

 who was financially a tower of strength in the work, 

 but I lost an intimate personal friend in whom I had 

 absolute trust. For a time it seemed as if this were 

 the end of everything; that all the effort and money 

 put into the project had been wasted. Mr. Jesup's 

 death, added to the delay caused by the default of 

 the contractors, seemed at first an absolutely para- 

 lyzing defeat. 



Nor was it much help that there was no lack of 

 well-meaning persons who were willing to assure me 

 that the year's delay and Mr. Jesup's death were 

 warnings indicating that I should never find the 

 Pole. 



Yet, when I gathered myself together and faced 

 the situation squarely, I realized that the project 

 was something too big to die; that it never, in the 

 great scheme of things, would be allowed to fall through. 

 This feeling carried me past many a dead center of 

 fatigue and utter ignorance as to where the rest of the 

 money for the expedition was to be obtained. The end 

 of the winter and the beginning of the spring of 1908 

 were marked by more than one blue day for every- 

 body concerned in the success of the expedition. 



