WE REACH THE POLE 299 



thought that my dream had come true, there was one 

 recollection of other times that, now and then, intruded 

 itself with startling distinctness. It was the recollection 

 of a day three years before, April 21, 1906, when after 

 making a fight with ice, open water, and storms, the 

 expedition which I commanded had been forced to 

 turn back from 87° 6' north latitude because our supply 

 of food would carry us no further. And the contrast 

 between the terrible depression of that day and the 

 exaltation of the present moment was not the least 

 pleasant feature of our brief stay at the Pole. During 

 the dark moments of that return journey in 1906, I 

 had told myself that I was only one in a long list of 

 arctic explorers, dating back through the centuries, 

 all the way from Henry Hudson to the Duke of the 

 Abruzzi, and including Franklin, Kane, and Melville — 

 a long list of valiant men who had striven and failed. 

 I told myself that I had only succeeded, at the price 

 of the best years of my life, in adding a few links to the 

 chain that led from the parallels of civilization towards 

 the polar center, but that, after all, at the end the only 

 word I had to write was failure. 



But now, while quartering the ice in various direc- 

 tions from our camp, I tried to realize that, after 

 twenty-three years of struggles and discouragement, 

 I had at last succeeded in placing the flag of my 

 country at the goal of the world's desire. It is not 

 easy to write about such a thing, but I knew that we 

 were going back to civilization with the last of the 

 great adventure stories — a story the world had been 

 waiting to hear for nearly four hundred years, a 

 story which was to be told at last under the folds of 



