“There are no landmarks on the ice, and when they reached the ice pack, they had to begin their careful navigating. In the first place, they had to hit the Pole exactly, chiefly because that was the place they had set out for, and then because if they didn’t hit it exactly, they would have no way of reckoning their path back to Spitzbergen, and would be lost in the arctic wastes.
“But expert navigating was Dick Byrd’s strong point. He had developed a sextant by which the altitude of the sun could be gaged without reference to the horizon line, and that was exactly what he needed now, because due to the formations of ice, the horizon was irregular. But figuring out position by means of the sextant requires at least an hour of mathematical calculation, and by the time the position had been figured, the men in the airplane had advanced about a hundred miles or more. So they used a method that they had learned, whereby their position could be judged by means of taking the altitude of the sun and laying down the line of position on a sort of graph.
“Their compass was of little value. They were too near the North Magnetic Pole, which had a tendency to pull their magnet from the geographical Pole to its own position, about 1,000 miles south. So they used a sun compass, that indicated their position by means of the sun. Of course, the fact that they had sun throughout the whole trip was an advantage. I doubt if they could have made it otherwise. Navigating up there is too difficult. Then they had to figure on wind drift. The wind, blowing pretty hard, say, about 30 miles an hour at right angles to their plane would cause it to drift thirty miles an hour out of its course. This they were able to make up for by means of the drift indicator, which compensated for the drift.
“Bennett piloted first. He would glance back to the cabin where Byrd was busy with the navigating instruments, and Byrd would indicate to him how to steer his course by waving his hand to the right or the left. When they were certain of their course, Byrd looked down on the land that he had desired to see since he had been a boy in school. Below them, stretching for mile upon mile was the ice pack, criss-crossed with ridges, seeming like mere bumps in the ice from their altitude, but really about 50 or 60 feet high. Every now and then they saw a lead, opened by the movement of the water—those treacherous leads that had led many a hardy explorer to his death.
“Byrd took the wheel. He steered with one hand while he held the compass in the other. Bennett poured gasoline into the tanks, and threw overboard the empty cans, to relieve the plane of weight. From then on they took turn and turn about at the wheel, Byrd navigating incessantly, until he had a slight attack of snow blindness from looking down at the snow so constantly.
“Soon they came to land where no man had ever been before. It was then that Byrd felt that he was being repaid for all the planning, all the hard work and heart-breaking disappointments that he had experienced. The sun was shining, the Josephine Ford functioning perfectly.
“Perfectly? Just a minute. They were about an hour from the Pole. Byrd noticed through the cabin window a bad leak in the oil tank of one motor. If the oil leaked out, the motor would burn up and stop. Should they land? No. Why not go on as far as they could, perhaps reach the Pole? They would be no worse off landing at the Pole than landing here, and they would have reached their goal. So on they kept. Byrd glued his eyes to the oil pressure gauge. If it dropped, their motor was doomed. But they would not land, or turn back.
“Luck was with them. At about two minutes past nine o’clock, they crossed the Pole. It takes just a minute to say it, but how many years of planning, how many years of patiently surmounting obstacles had prepared for that minute’s statement!
“Below them was the frozen, snow-covered ocean, with the ice broken up into various formations of ice fields, indicating that there was no land about. Byrd flew the plane in a circle several miles in diameter, with the Pole as a center. His field of view was 120 miles in diameter. All this while he was flying south, since all directions away from the Pole are south. And now, his purpose accomplished, his hardest task faced him. He had to fly back to Spitzbergen.
“Soon after he left the Pole, the sextant that he was using slid off the chart table, breaking the horizon glass. He had to navigate the whole trip back by dead reckoning! With the oil fast spurting out, and the motor threatening to stop any minute, and no sextant to show his position, Byrd had his hands full. They lost track of time. Minutes seemed like hours, hours like ages. Then they saw land dead ahead. It was Spitzbergen! Byrd had flown into the unknown, 600 miles from any land, had turned about, and come back to the very spot from which he had started.