Not knowing that a medal was to be presented to me at that time, I descended from the platform on concluding my speech. I met the crown prince, who was ascending, and who spoke to me. I did not understand him and proceeded to the floor before the stage. Embarrassed by my misunderstanding, he unfolded his papers and began a presentation speech. Confused, I remained standing below. Whether I ascended the stage and made a reply or received the medal from the floor, I do not now remember.
During the several days that followed I spent most of my time answering correspondence and attending to local obligations. An entire day was spent autographing photographs for members of the royal family. After much hard work I got things in such shape that I saw my way clear to go to Brussels, return to Copenhagen, and make an early start for home.
I had delivered my talk before the Geographical Society. The reporters had seen me, and assailed me with questions, and had packed their suit cases. Tired to death and exhausted with want of sleep, I viewed the prospect of a departure with relief. Because of my condition I refused an invitation to attend a banquet which the newspaper Politiken gave to the foreign correspondents at the Tivoli restaurant.
They insisted that I come, if only for five minutes, and promised that there would be no attempt at interviewing. I went and listened wearily to the speeches, made in different languages, and felt no stir at the applause. While the representative of the Matin was speaking in French, some one tiptoed up to me and placed a cablegram under my plate. From all sides attendants appeared with cables which were quietly placed under the plates of the various reporters. The Matin man stopped; we looked at the cables. A deadly lull fell in the room. You could have heard a pin drop. It was Peary's first message—"Stars and Stripes nailed to the Pole!"
My first feeling, as I read it, was of spontaneous belief. Well, I thought, he got there! On my right and left men were arguing about it. It was declared a hoax. I recognized the characteristic phrasing as Peary's. I knew that the operators along the Labrador coast knew Peary and that it would be almost impossible to perpetrate a joke. I told this to the dinner party. The speeches continued. No reference was made to the message, but the air seemed charged with electricity.
My feeling at the news, as I analyze it, was not of envy or chagrin. I thought of Peary's hard, long years of effort, and I was glad; I felt no rivalry about the Pole; I did feel, aside from the futility of reaching the Pole itself, that Peary's trip possibly might be of great scientific value; that he had probably discovered new lands and mapped new seas of ice. "There is glory enough for all," I told the reporters.
At the hotel a pile of telegrams six inches high, from various papers, awaited me. I picked eight representative papers and made some diplomatic reply, expressing what I felt. That Peary would contest my claim never entered my head. It did seem, and still seems, in itself too inconsequential a thing to make such a fuss about. This may be hard to believe to those who have magnified the heroism of such an achievement, a thing I never did feel and could not feel.
While sitting at the farewell dinner of the Geographical Society the following day, Mr. Peary's second message, saying that my Eskimos declared I had not gone far out of sight of land, came to me. Those about received it with indignation. Many advised me to reply in biting terms. This I did not do; did not feel like doing.
Peary's messages caused me to make a change in my plans. Previously I had accepted an invitation to go to Brussels, but now, as I was being attacked, I determined to return home immediately and face the charges in person. I took passage on the steamship Oscar II, sailing direct from Copenhagen to New York.