The 5th of September was a memorable day, one that practically ended my fears and anxieties. At 3:30 A. M. we got under way after about an hour’s backing and butting to get out of our niche. A narrow strip of water close inshore showed as far as Cape Union where a narrow but apparently dense barrier pressed against the Cape. Would it let us through? As we neared the barrier it was evidently only about a mile wide, with water beyond it extending to Cape Rawson. I kept both watches of firemen on, and routed out the chief engineer ahead of his watch, because it was evident that we must get through now. In a few minutes the Roosevelt was in the thick of it, throbbing like a motor, the black smoke pouring from her stack, and successfully forced her way through. Cape Union was passed at 4:30 A. M. South of Rawson the ice ran close in against the shore but was looser outside, and we made a wide detour to the northeast, the captain, the mate, and myself in the rigging. The ice was in large, heavy floes and in rapid motion swinging into the mouth of the channel on the flood-tide. The anxious moments were numerous both as to whether we should get through, and also as to whether we should escape a serious nip.

Soon we opened up the Alert’s cairn at Floeberg Beach and could see a narrow canal of water extending close to the ice-foot, and at 7 A. M. the Roosevelt, racing with the incoming pack, was driven through a narrow stream of ice and fairly hurled into a niche in the face of the ice-foot under the extremity of Cape Sheridan and made fast. The ice was packed heavily against the point of the cape and grinding past it. Before our lines were made fast the ice had closed in upon us and the open water behind us was rapidly disappearing.

We were now about two miles beyond the Alert’s position, moored to the exposed face of the ice-foot, with the nose of the Roosevelt pointing almost true north. I felt now that the risks, the chances of the voyage were past. The ship might be lost by being forced ashore, for our position was an extremely exposed one, but we were not likely to lose provisions and equipment, and with these the remainder of the programme could be carried out, and even should she get no farther she would have done her duty and achieved the purpose of her being.

With my feelings of relief, was a glow of satisfaction that by a hard-fought struggle we had successfully negotiated the narrow, ice-encumbered waters which form the American gateway and route to the Pole; had distanced our predecessors; and had substantiated my prophecy to the club, that with a suitable ship, the attainment of a base on the north shore of Grant Land was feasible almost every year.

Previous to the Roosevelt, only two other ships, the Polaris and the Albert, had completely navigated these channels; and two others, the Discovery and the Proteus, had penetrated them as far as Discovery Harbour.

Our freedom of movement and ability to leave the shelter of the land and cross and recross the channel at will through the heaviest ice, was also gratifying to me.

In the voyage from New York to Etah we had passed the latitudes of the most northern extremities of North America, Europe and Asia.

Since leaving Etah, we had passed the latitudes of the most northern extremities of Spitzbergen and Franz Joseph Land, and now only the northern points of the two most northern lands in the world, Cape Morris Jesup and Cape Columbia, lay a little beyond us. The northern-reaching fingers of all the rest of the great world lay far behind us below the ice-bound southern horizon. We were deep in that gaunt frozen border land which lies between God’s countries and inter-stellar space.

CHAPTER III
AUTUMN AT CAPE SHERIDAN

It was hoped that the next ebb-tide would give us an opportunity to advance farther, and immediately after breakfast I hurried ashore to examine the ice beyond Cape Sheridan and visit the cairn built by the Alert thirty years before. The weather was too thick to permit any satisfactory reconnoissance. I took the Alert’s record from the cairn, a copy of which Marvin later replaced together with an additional brief memorandum. All the slopes of the land were white with snow above which the cairn, and the lonely grave of Petersen, Danish interpreter of the English expedition, stood out in sombre silhouette. The Roosevelt was moored close by a ledge of rocks where, in 1902, I had deposited a small cache for my return.