The spring came, finally, and it was Peary’s assistant, Mathew Henson, who called to Father one morning and pointed aft. A thin ray of light was in the southern sky. In the days that followed, distinctions in the kinds of darkness could be made, and these became more and more pronounced. Finally one morning there rose above the horizon a blurred and blood-red sun, not round but elliptically misshapen, like something born. Everyone became happy. Glorious colors, pink and green and yellow, lay upon the snow peaks, and the entire bleak magnificent world offered itself to who would take it. The sky gradually turned blue and Peary said the time had come to conquer the Pole.
The day before the expedition was to leave, Father went along with Mathew Henson and three of the Eskimos to the bird cliffs half a day’s journey from the coast. They climbed the cliffs with sealskin bags hung over their shoulders and collected dozen of eggs, a great delicacy in the Artic. When the bird flew up, chattering and circling, it was as if a portion of the rock cliff had come away. Father had never seen so many birds. They were fulmar and auk. The Eskimos held out nets between then and the birds flew into the nets and became entangled. The nets were taken up at the corners and became sacks of immobile weighted feathers chirping piteously. When the men had caught all they could carry, they made the descent and straightaway slaughtered the birds. The fulmar, about the size of gulls, were wrung at the neck. But what amazed Father was the means by which the small and inoffensive auk was done in. One simply nudged the tiny heart in its breast. Father watched it done and then tried it himself. He held an auk in one hand and with his thumb gently squeezed the beating breast. Its head slumped and it was dead. The Eskimos loved the auklet and customarily pickled it in sealskins.
On the way back to camp Father and Mathew Henson discussed what the men under Peary always discussed — who would have the honor of actually going to the Pole with him. Before the embarkation from New York the Commander had made it quite clear to everyone that he and he alone was to discover the Pole: their glory would be in support. I’ve spent my life planning for that moment, Peary said, and I’m going to have it for myself. This seemed to Father a reasonable point of view. He had the diffidence of the amateur before the professional. But it was Mathew Henson’s view that someone besides Esquimos would have to go to the top with the Commander, and he thought, with all the respect, it would be himself. Actually Father believed Henson had a good case. Henson had been with Peary on his previous expeditions and he was an astute and formidable Artic explorer in his own right. He knew how to drive the dogs almost as well as an Eskimo, he knew how to repair sledges, build camps, he had great physical strength and boasted many skills. But Father found himself unaccountably resenting Henson’s presumption and he asked the Negro how he knew he would be chosen. They had breasted a ridge along the trail and stood resting the dogs for a moment as they looked over a great white plain of snow. At that moment the sun broke through the overcast and the entire earth flashed like a mirror. Well, sir Mathew Henson said with a smile, I just know.
The next day the expedition set out due north across the polar ice. They were arranged in separate parties consisting of a white man or two, a group of Eskimo boys, a pack of dogs and four or five sledges. Each party except Peary’s was to serve for a week as pioneer or trailbreaker to the rest of the expedition. Eventually, each of them was to peel off and head back to land, leaving Peary and his boys to make the last hundred miles or so in fresh, relatively rested condition. That was the system. The big work was in breaking trail. This was hazardous and backbreaking labor. Ridges of ice had to be hacked away with a pickax, heavy sledges had to be hauled and pushed up ice inclines and then held against precipitous descents. Each sled carried over six hundred pounds of tools and provisions. When it broke, it had to be unloaded and repaired by lashing the broken parts together — work that required an ungloved hand. There were leads of water that had to be crossed or waited out. The ice floes came together with great cracks, like the sound of cannon, and rumbled underfoot like the voice of the ocean itself. Inexplicable fogs blocked out the sun. Sometimes there was nothing to do but crawl across thin sheets of forming ice; no one wanted to be caught on a drifting ice floe. The weather was a constant torment, the wind blowing so sharply at fifty or sixty degrees below zero that the air itself seemed to have changed its physical nature, being now unassimilable crystals in one’s lungs. Each breath left its solid residue in the beard or on the frozen edges of the fur hoods. Everyone wore the prescribed soft sealskin shoes, the bear fur trousers and the hooded caribou jackets, but even these indigenous materials turned brittle in the frost. The sun now stood above the horizon twenty-four hours a day. At the end of a day’s travel, perhaps fifteen miles of arduous effort, the pioneer group would make camp, build igloos for the pursuing expedition, feed the dogs, untangle their iced-up traces, light the alcohol cooker to brew tea, and fall to a meal of frozen pemmican and crackers. Slowly through the month of March the Peary expedition made its way due north. One by one a party would turn back, its obligations now to beat the return trail as thoroughly as possible to make it easier for the parties who would follows. Peary would bring up the lag each day on the outgoing run and immediately occupy one of the igloos built for him by Henson. In the meantime Henson took care of Peary’s dogs, repaired broken sledges, made supper, dealt with the Eskimos, many of whom were now becoming difficult. Peary defined the virtues of Eskimos as loyalty and obedience, roughly the same virtues one sought in the dogs. When the time came for the final run for the Pole, now only a hundred miles away, Peary did indeed choose Henson to go with him, and Henson chose the Esquimos who in his judgment were the best boys, the most loyal and devoted to the Commander. The balance of the party was turned around and sent home.
Father had long since gone back. He has pioneered the very first week. He had proven not the sturdiest member of the expedition. This was from no lack of heart, as Peary told him before sending him home, but from the tendency of his extremities to freeze easily. Father’s left heel, for instance, froze every day, no matter what he did to protect it. Each evening in camp he would thaw it out painfully and treat it as best he could, and each morning it would freeze up again. So too with one of his knees and a small area on the top of his hand. Pieces of Father froze very casually and Peary said this was the fate of some men in the North and nothing could be done about it. Peary was not an unkind commander, and he liked Father. During the long winter months aboard the Roosevelt, they had discovered themselves members of the same national collegiate fraternity, and this was no light bond between them. But after a lifetime of effort Peary was impatient to get his task done. Father’s society had paid a good sum into the Peary chest, and for it they got their man to seventy-two degrees, forty-six minutes, a very respectable way. Before he left, Father presented the Commander with an American flag he had manufactured for the occasion. It was pure silk and a good size, but when folded had no more bulk than a large handkerchief. Peary thanked him, put the flag inside his furs and, after warning Father to look out for the leads, sent him on his return journey to the Roosevelt in the company of three bad-tempered Eskimos.