My Attainment of the Pole Part 25

6 P. M. (same camp). 12--00--10 Moved camp 4 miles magnetic South 12 o'clock (midnight) 12-- 3--50 April 22nd, 6 A. M. 12-- 9--30 12 o'clock noon 12--14--20 6 P. M. 12--18--40 12 o'clock (midnight) 12--25--10 Temperature, -41. Barometer, 30.05.

Shadow 27 feet (of 6-foot pole).

With the use of the s.e.xtant, the artificial horizon, pocket chronometers, and the usual instruments and methods of explorers, our observations were continued and our positions were fixed with the most painstakingly careful safeguards possible against inaccuracy. The value of all such observations as proof of a Polar success, however, is open to such interpretation as the future may determine. This applies, not only to me, but to anyone who bases any claim upon them.

To me there were many seemingly insignificant facts noted in our northward progress which left the imprint of milestones. Our footprints marked a road ever onward into the unknown. Many of these almost unconscious reckonings took the form of playful impressions, and were not even at the time written down.

In the first press reports of my achievement there was not s.p.a.ce to go into minute details, nor did the presentation of the subject permit an elaboration on all the data gathered. But now, in the light of a better perspective, it seems important that every possible phase of the minutest detail be presented. For only by a careful consideration of every phase of every phenomena en route can a true verdict be obtained upon this widely discussed subject of Polar attainment.

And now, right here, I want you to consider carefully with me one thing which made me feel sure that we had reached the Pole. This is the subject of shadows--our own shadows on the snow-covered ice. A seemingly unimportant phenomenon which had often been a topic of discussion, and so commonplace that I only rarely referred to it in my notebooks, our own shadows on the snow-cushioned ice had told of northward movement, and ultimately proved to my satisfaction that the Pole had been reached.

In our northward progress--to explain my shadow observations from the beginning--for a long time after our start from Svartevoeg, our shadows did not perceptibly shorten or brighten, to my eyes. The natives, however, got from these shadows a never-ending variety of topics of conversation. They foretold storms, located game and read the story of home entanglements. Far from land, far from every sign of a cheering, solid earth, wandering with our shadows over the hopeless desolation of the moving seas of glitter, I, too, took a keen interest in the blue blots that represented our bodies. At noon, by comparison with later hours, they were sharp, short, of a dark, restful blue. At this time a thick atmosphere of crystals rested upon the ice pack, and when the sun sank the strongest purple rays could not penetrate the frosty haze.

Long before the time for sunset, even on clear days, the sun was lost in low clouds of drifting needles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHADOW-CIRCLES INDICATING THE APPROACH TO THE POLE

Shadow-circle about 250 miles from the Pole. Circle from which extend radiating shadow-lines mark position of man.

Shadow-circle when nearing the Pole, showing less difference in length during the changing hours.

Shadow-circle at the Pole; standing on the same spot, at each hour, one's shadow is always apparently of the same length.

Showing approximately the relative length of a man's shadow for each hour of the twenty-four-hour day.]

After pa.s.sing the eighty-eighth parallel there was a notable change in our shadows. The night shadow lengthened; the day shadow, by comparison, shortened. The boys saw in this something which they could not understand. The positive blue grew to a permanent purple, and the sharp outlines ran to vague, indeterminate edges.

Now at the Pole there was no longer any difference in length, color or sharpness of outline between the shadow of the day or night.

"What does it all mean?" they asked. The Eskimos looked with eager eyes at me to explain, but my vocabulary was not comprehensive enough to give them a really scientific explanation, and also my brain was too weary from the muscular poison of fatigue to frame words.

The shadows of midnight and those of midday were the same. The sun made a circle about the heavens in which the eye detected no difference in its height above the ice, either night or day. Throughout the twenty-four hours there was no perceptible rise or set in the sun's seeming movement. Now, at noon, the shadow represented in its length the alt.i.tude of the sun--about twelve degrees. At six o'clock it was the same. At midnight it was the same. At six o'clock in the morning it was the same.

A picture of the snowhouse and ourselves, taken at the same time and developed a year later, gives the same length of shadow. The compa.s.s pointed south. The night drop of the thermometer had vanished. Let us, for the sake of argument, grant that all our instrumental observations are wrong. Here is a condition of things in which I believed, and still believe, the eye, without instrumental a.s.sistance, places the sun at about the same height for every hour of the day and night. It is only on the earth's axis that such an observation is possible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: At a lat.i.tude about New York, a man's shadow lengthens hour by hour as the sun descends toward the horizon at nightfall.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: At the North Pole, a man's shadow is of equal length during the entire twenty-four hours, since the sun moves spirally around the heavens at about the same apparent height above the horizon throughout the twenty-four-hour day.]

There was about us no land. No fixed point. Absolutely nothing upon which to rest the eye to give the sense of location or to judge distance.

Here everything moves. The sea breathes, and lifts the crust of ice which the wind stirs. The pack ever drifts in response to the pull of the air and the drive of the water. Even the sun, the only fixed dot in this stirring, restless world, where all you see is, without your seeing it, moving like a ship at sea, seems to have a rapid movement in a gold-flushed circle not far above endless fields of purple crystal; but that movement is never higher, never lower--always in the same fixed path. The instruments detect a slight spiral ascent, day after day, but the eye detects no change.

Although I had measured our shadows at times on the northward march, at the Pole these shadow notations were observed with the same care as the measured alt.i.tude of the sun by the s.e.xtant. A series was made on April 22, after E-tuk-i-shook and I had left Ah-we-lah in charge of our first camp at the Pole. We made a little circle for our feet in the snow.

E-tuk-i-shook stood in the foot circle. At midnight the first line was cut in the snow to the end of his shadow, and then I struck a deep hole with the ice-axe. Every hour a similar line was drawn out from his foot.

At the end of twenty-four hours, with the help of Ah-we-lah, a circle was circ.u.mscribed along the points, which marked the end of the shadow for each hour. The result is represented in the snow diagram on the next page.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHADOW DIAL AT THE POLE

At the Pole, a man's shadow is about the same length for every hour of the double day. When a shadow line is drawn in the snow from a man's foot in a marked dial, the human shadows take the place of the hands of a clock and mark the time by compa.s.s bearing. The relative length of these shadows also give the lat.i.tude or a man's position north or south of the equator. When during two turns around the clock dial, the shadows are all of about equal length, the position of the earth's axis is positively reached--even if all other observations fail. This simple demonstration is an indisputable proof of being on the North Pole.]

In the northward march we did not stay up all of bedtime to play with shadow circles. But, at this time, to E-tuk-i-shook the thing had a spiritual interest. To me it was a part of the act of proving that the Pole had been attained. For only about the Pole, I argued, could all shadows be of equal length. Because of this combination of keen interests, we managed to find an excuse, even during sleep hours, to draw a line on our shadow circle.

Here, then, I felt, was an important observation placing me with fair accuracy at the Pole, and, unlike all other observations, it was not based on the impossible dreams of absolutely accurate time or sure corrections for refraction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW THE ALt.i.tUDE OF THE SUN ABOVE THE HORIZON FIXES THE POSITION OF THE NORTH POLE

OBSERVED ALt.i.tUDES, APRIL 22, 1908

6 A. M. NOON 6 P. M.

12 9' 30'' 12 14' 20'' 12 18' 40''

The exact alt.i.tude of the sun at noon of April 22, 1908, on the pole, was 12 9' 16'', but owing to ice-drift--the impossibility of accurate time--and unknown error by refraction, no such pin-point accuracy can be recorded. At each hour the sun, circling about the horizon, cast a shadow of uniform length.]

At the place where E-tuk-i-shook and I camped, four miles south of where I had left Ah-we-lah with the dogs, only two big ice hummocks were in sight. There were more s.p.a.ces of open water than at our first camp.

After a midnight observation--of April 22--we returned to camp. When the dogs saw us approaching in the distance they rose, and a chorus of howls rang over the regions of the Pole--regions where dogs had never howled before. All the scientific work being finished, we began hastily to make final preparations for departure.

We had spent two days about the North Pole. After the first thrills of victory, the glamor wore away as we rested and worked. Although I tried to do so, I could get no sensation of novelty as we pitched our last belongings on the sleds. The intoxication of success had gone. I suppose intense emotions are invariably followed by reactions. Hungry, mentally and physically exhausted, a sense of the utter uselessness of this thing, of the empty reward of my endurance, followed my exhilaration. I had grasped my _ignus fatuus_. It is a misfortune for any man when his _ignus fatuus_ fails to elude him.

During those last hours I asked myself why this place had so aroused an enthusiasm long-lasting through self-sacrificing years; why, for so many centuries, men had sought this elusive spot? What a futile thing, I thought, to die for! How tragically useless all those heroic efforts--efforts, in themselves, a travesty, an ironic satire, on much vainglorious human aspiration and endeavor! I thought of the enthusiasm of the people who read of the spectacular efforts of men to reach this vacant silver-shining goal of death. I thought, too, in that hour, of the many men of science who were devoting their lives to the study of germs, the making of toxins; to the saving of men from the grip of disease--men who often lost their own lives in their experiments; whose world and work existed in unpicturesque laboratories, and for whom the laudations of people never rise. It occurred to me--and I felt the bitterness of tears in my soul--that it is often the showy and futile deeds of men which men praise; and that, after all, the only work worth while, the only value of a human being's efforts, lie in deeds whereby humanity benefits. Such work as n.o.ble bands of women accomplish who go into the slums of great cities, who nurse the sick, who teach the ignorant, who engage in social service humbly, patiently, unexpectant of any reward! Such work as does the scientist who studies the depredations of malignant germs, who straightens the body of the crippled child, who precipitates a toxin which cleanses the blood of a frightful and loathsome disease!

As my eye sought the silver and purple desert about me for some stable object upon which to fasten itself, I experienced an abject abandon, an intolerable loneliness. With my two companions I could not converse; in my thoughts and emotions they could not share. I was alone. I was victorious. But how desolate, how dreadful was this victory! About us was no life, no spot to relieve the monotony of frost. We were the only pulsating creatures in a dead world of ice.

A wild eagerness to get back to land seized me. It seemed as though some new terror had arisen from the icy waters. Something huge, something baneful ... invisible ... yet whose terror-inspiring, burning eyes I felt ... the master genii of the goal, perhaps ... some vague, terrible, disembodied spirit force, condemned for some unimaginable sin to solitary prisonment here at the top of the world, and who wove its malignant, awful spell, and had lured men on for centuries to their destruction.... The desolation of the place was such that it was almost palpable; it was a thing I felt I must touch and see. My companions felt the heavy load of it upon them, and from the few words I overheard I knew they were eagerly picturing to themselves the simple joys of existence at Etah and Annoatok. I remember that to me came pictures of my Long Island home. All this arose, naturally enough, from the reaction following the strain of striving so long and so fiercely after the goal, combined with the sense of the great and actual peril of our situation.

But what a cheerless spot this was, to have aroused the ambition of man for so many ages!

There came forcibly, too, the thought that although the Pole was discovered, it was not essentially discovered, that it could be discovered, in the eyes of the world, unless we could return to civilization and tell what we had done. Should we be lost in these wastes or should we be frozen to death, or buried in the snow, or drowned in a creva.s.se, it would never be known that we had been here. It was, therefore, as vitally necessary to get back in touch with human life, with our report, as it had been to get to the Pole.

Before leaving, I enclosed a note, written on the previous day, in a metallic tube. This I buried in the surface of the Polar snows. I knew, of course, that this would not remain long at the spot, as the ice was in the grip of a slow-drifting movement. I felt the possibility of this slow movement was more important than if it remained stationary; for, if ever found in the south, the destination of the tube would indicate the ice drift from the Pole. The following is an exact copy of the original note, which is reproduced photographically on another page:

COPY OF NOTE IN TUBE.

April 21--at the North Pole.

Accompanied by the Eskimo boys Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shuk I reached at noon to-day 90 N. a spot on the polar sea 520 miles north of Svartevoeg. We were 35 days en route. Hope to return to-morrow on a line slightly west of the northward track.

New land was discovered along the 102 M. between 84 and 85. The ice proved fairly good, with few open leads, hard snow and little pressure trouble. We are in good health, and have food for forty days. This, with the meat of the dogs to be sacrificed, will keep us alive for fifty or sixty days.

This note is deposited with a small American flag in a metallic tube on the drifting ice.

Its return will be appreciated, to the International Bureau of Polar Research at the Royal Observatory, Uccle, Belgium.

(Signed) FREDERICK A. COOK.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POLAR ADVANCE OF THE NATIONAL STANDARDS

Climax of four centuries of Arctic exploration--Stars and Stripes at the Pole.]