ern 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.

[Illustration: 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 oi