298 THENORTHPOLE 



degree of intense feeling as the brain can endure, and 

 the grim guardians of earth's remotest spot will accept 

 no man as guest until he has been tried and tested by 

 the severest ordeal. 



Perhaps it ought not to have been so, but when I 

 knew for a certainty that we had reached the goal, 

 there was not a thing in the world I wanted but sleep. 

 But after I had a few hours of it, there succeeded 

 a condition of mental exaltation which made further 

 rest impossible. For more than a score of years 

 that point on the earth's surface had been the ob- 

 ject of my every effort. To its attainment my whole 

 being, physical, mental, and moral, had been dedicated. 

 Many times my own life and the lives of those with 

 me had been risked. My own material and forces 

 and those of my friends had been devoted to this 

 object. This journey was my eighth into the arctic 

 wilderness. In that wilderness I had spent nearly 

 twelve years out of the twenty-three between my 

 thirtieth and my fifty -third year, and the intervening 

 time spent in civilized communities during that period 

 had been mainly occupied with preparations for 

 returning to the wilderness. The determination to 

 reach the Pole had become so much a part of my being 

 that, strange as it may seem, I long ago ceased to think 

 of myself save as an instrument for the attainment 

 of that end. To the layman this may seem strange, 

 but an inventor can understand it, or an artist, or 

 anyone who has devoted himself for years upon years 

 to the service of an idea. 



But though my mind was busy at intervals during 

 those thirty hours spent at the Pole with the exhilarating 



