MENDING NEAR THE POLE
TO THE POLE—THE LAST HUNDRED MILES
OVER PLAINS OF GOLD AND SEAS OF PALPITATING COLOR THE DOG TEAMS, WITH NOSES DOWN, TAILS ERECT, DASH SPIRITEDLY LIKE CHARIOT HORSES—CHANTING LOVE SONGS THE ESKIMOS FOLLOW WITH SWINGING STEP—TIRED EYES OPEN TO NEW GLORY—STEP BY STEP, WITH THUMPING HEARTS THE EARTH'S APEX IS NEARED—AT LAST! THE GOAL IS REACHED! THE STARS AND STRIPES ARE FLUNG TO THE FRIGID BREEZES OF THE NORTH POLE!
XIX
Boreal Center is Pierced
I shall never forget that dismal hour. I shall never forget that desolate drab scene about us—those endless stretches of gray and dead-white ice, that drab dull sky, that thickening blackness in the west which entered into and made gray and black our souls, that ominous, eerie and dreadful wind, betokening a terrorizing Arctic storm. I shall never forget the mournful group before me, in itself an awful picture of despair, of man's ambition failing just as victory is within his grasp. Ah-we-lah, a thin, half-starved figure in worn furs, lay over his sled, limp, dispirited, broken. In my ears I can now hear his low sobbing words, I can see the tears on his yellow fissured face. I can see E-tuk-i-shook standing gaunt and grim, and as he gazed yearningly onward to the south, sighing pitifully, shudderingly for the home, the loved one, An-na-do-a, left behind, whom, I could tell, he did not expect to see again.
It was a critical moment. Up to this time, during the second week of April, we had, by intense mental force, goaded our wearied legs onward to the limit of endurance. With a cutting wind in our faces, feeling with each step the cold more severely to the marrow of our bones, with our bodily energy and our bodily heat decreasing, we had traveled persistently, suffering intolerable pains with every breath. Despite increasing despair, I had cheered my companions as best I could; I had impressed upon them the constant nearing of my goal. I had encouraged in them the belief of nearness of land; each day I had gone on, fearing what had now come, the utter breaking of their spirits.
"Unne-sinikpo-ashuka." (Yes, it is well to die.)
"Awonga-up-dow-epuksha!" (Yesterday I, too, felt that way), I said to myself. The sudden extinction of consciousness, I thought, might be indeed a blessed relief. But as long as life persisted, as long as human endurance could be strained, I determined to continue. Desperate as was my condition, and suffering hellish tortures, the sight of the despair of my companions re-aroused me. Should we fail now, after our long endurance, now, when the goal was so near?