possible contingencies
that might occur within a year; and it meant the bitterness of hope
deferred.

On the day when it became lamentably clear that I positively _could not_
sail north that year, I felt much as I had felt when I had been obliged
to turn back from 87 deg. 6', with only the empty bauble "farthest north,"
instead of the great prize which I had almost strained my life out to
achieve. Fortunately I did not know that Fate was even then clenching
her fist for yet another and more crushing blow.

While trying to possess my soul in patience despite the unjustified
delay, there came the heaviest calamity encountered in all my arctic
work--the death of my friend, Morris K. Jesup. Without his promised help
the future expedition seemed impossible. It may be said with perfect
truth that to him, more than to any other one man, had been due the
inception and the continuance of the Peary Arctic Club, and the success
of the work thus far. In him we lost not only a man who was financially
a tower of strength in the work, but I lost an intimate personal friend
in whom I had absolute trust. For a time it seemed as if this were the
end of everything; that all the effort and money put into the project
had been wasted. Mr. Jesup's death, added to the delay caused by the
default of the contractors, seemed at first an absolutely paralyzing
defeat.

Nor was it much help that there was no lack of well-meaning persons who
were willing to assure me that the year's delay and Mr. Jesup's death
were warnings indicating that I should never find the Pole.

Yet, when I gathered myself together and faced the situation squarely, I
realized that the project was something too big to die; that it never,
in the great scheme of things, would be allowed to fall through. This
feeling carried me past many a dead center of fatigue and utter
ignorance as to where the rest of the money for the expedition was to be
obtained. The end of the winter and the beginning of the spring of 1908
were marked by more than one blue day for everybody concerned in the
success of the expedition.

Repairs and changes in the _Roosevelt_ had exhausted all the funds in
the Club's treasury. We still needed the money for purchase of supplies
and equipment, pay of crew, and running expenses. Mr. Jesup was gone;
the country had not recovered from the financial crash of the previous
fall; every one was poor.

Then from this lowest ebb the tide turned. Mrs. Jesup, in th