We rounded the cape at a quarter past seven, fifteen minutes later than the time of our arrival in 1905. Since the 23d of August, thirteen days before, neither Bartlett nor I had had our clothes off.
Should we stop here? There was still open water beyond. I gave orders to steam ahead, hoping that we might reach Porter Bay. But after two miles we came to another impassable barrier of ice, and it was decided that it was Cape Sheridan again for this year's winter quarters. Back we went, and the work of getting the Roosevelt inside the tide crack was begun.
My heart was light. Those two miles beyond Cape Sheridan had given us the record of "farthest north" which any vessel had ever reached under her own steam, 82° 30´. One vessel only, Nansen's Fram, had been farther north, but she had drifted there stern foremost, a plaything of the ice. Again the little black, strenuous Roosevelt had proven herself the champion.
There are some feelings which a man cannot express in words. Such were mine as the mooring lines went out onto the ice foot at Cape Sheridan. We had kept the scheduled time of our program and had negotiated the first part of the difficult proposition—that of driving a ship from New York to a point within striking distance of the Pole. All the uncertainties of ice navigation—the possible loss of the Roosevelt and a large quantity of our supplies—were at an end. Another source of gratification was the realization that this last voyage had further accentuated the value of detailed experience in this arduous work. Notwithstanding the delays which had sometimes seemed endless, we had made the voyage with only a small percentage of the anxieties and injury to the ship which we had experienced on the former upward journey in 1905.
Lying there, with the northern bounds of all known lands—except those close to us—lying far to the south, we were in a position properly to attack the second part of our problem, the projection of a sledge party from the ship to the Pole itself. This rounding of Cape Sheridan was not the ultimate achievement probable.
So great was our relief at having driven the Roosevelt through the ice of Robeson Channel, that as soon as the mooring lines were out at Cape Sheridan we set to work unloading the ship with light-hearted eagerness. The Roosevelt was grounded inside the tide crack, and the first things we got ashore were the two hundred and forty-six dogs, which had made the ship a noisy and ill-smelling inferno for the last eighteen days. They were simply dropped over the rail onto the ice, and in a few minutes the shore in all directions was dotted with them, as they ran, leaped and barked in the snow. The decks were washed down with hose, and the work of unloading began. First the sledges came down from the bridge deck, where they had been built during the upward voyage, a fine fleet of twenty-three.
THE ROOSEVELT DRYING OUT HER SAILS AT CAPE SHERIDAN, SEPTEMBER, 1908
(The Dark Spots on the Shore are the Supplies and Equipment of the Expedition)
We wanted to get the ship well inside the ice barrier where she would be really safe, so we lightened her that she might float with the high tide. We made chutes from planks, and down these we slid the oil cases from the main deck and the hold. It was necessary to work carefully, as the ice was thin at that season. Later two or three sledge loads of supplies broke through, and the Eskimos with them; but as the water was only five or six feet deep, and the supplies were packed in tins, no serious damage was done.