THE POLE 
                               by 
                        MATTHEW A.HENSON 


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COPY these VOCABULARY words and phrases into your notebook.
DEFINE each word or phrase.
cairns    channel        congealed      emblem         fatigue
fettle    floeberg       gauging        hideous        igloos
livid     nape           ordained       paleocrystic   reckoning
sextant   sledge         spurt          standard       toil
a solar observation
87ø 48'
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          Keep track of all the acts of discrimination
          that you see as you read this story.

THE STORY:
     Day and night were the same.  My thoughts were on the going
and getting forward, and on nothing else.  The wind was from the
southeast, and seemed to push us on, and the sun was at our backs,
a ball of livid fire, rolling his way above the horizon in
neverending day.
     Captain Bartlett had gone.  Commander Peary and I were alone
(save for the four Eskimos, Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo and Ooquah),
the same as we had been so often in the past years.  As we looked
at each other, we realized our position and we knew without
speaking that the time had come for us to demonstrate that we were
the men who, it had been ordained, should unlock the door which
held the mystery of the Arctic.  Without an instant's hesitation,
the order to push on was given, and we started off in the trail
made by the captain to cover the Farthest North he had made and to
push on over one hundred and thirty miles to our final destination.
     The captain had had rough going, but, owing to the fact that
his trail was our track for a short time, and that we came to good
going shortly after leaving his turning point, we made excellent
distance without any trouble, and only stopped when we came to a
channel barely frozen over, a full twenty-five miles beyond.  We
camped and waited for the strong southeast wind to force the sides
of the channel together.  The Eskimos had eaten a meal of stewed
dog, cooked over a fire of wood from a discarded sledge, and, owing
to their wonderful powers of recuperation, were in good condition. 
Commander Peary and myself, rested and invigorated by our thirty
hours in the last camp, waiting for the return and departure of
Captain Bartlett, were also in fine fettle and accordingly the
accomplishment of twenty-five miles of northward progress was not
exceptional.  With my proven ability in gauging distances,
Commander Peary was ready to take the reckoning  as I made it and
he did not resort to solar observations until we were within a
hand's grasp of the Pole.
     The memory of those last five marches, from the Farthest North
of Captain Bartlett to the arrival of our party at the Pole, is a
memory of toil, fatigue, and exhaustion, but we were urged on and
encouraged by our relentless commander, who was himself being
scourged by the final lashings of the dominating influence that had
controlled his life.  From the land to 87ø 48' north, Commander
Peary had had the best of the going, for he had brought up the rear
and had utilized the trail made by the preceding parties, and thus
he had kept himself in the best of condition for the time when he
made the spurt that brought him to the end of the race.  
     From 87ø 48' north, he kept in the lead and did his work in
such a way as to convince me that he was still as good a man as he
had ever been.  We marched and marched, falling down in our tracks
repeatedly, until it was impossible to go on.  We were forced to
camp, in spite of the impatience of the commander, who found
himself unable to rest, and who only waited long enough for us to
relax into sound sleep, when he would wake us up and start us off
again.  I do not believe that he slept for one hour from April 2
until after he had loaded us up and ordered us to go back over our
old trail, and I often think that from the instant when the order
to return was given until the land was again sighted, he was in a
continual daze. 
     Onward we forced our weary way.  Commander Peary took his
sights from the time our chronometer watches, gave, and I, knowing
that we had kept on going in practically a straight line, was sure
that we had more than covered the necessary distance to insure our
arrival at the top of the earth.
     It was during the march of the third of April that I endured
an instant of hideous horror.  We were crossing a lane of moving
ice.  Commander Peary was in the lead setting the pace, and a half
hour later the four boys and myself followed in single file.  They
had all gone before, and I was standing and pushing at the
upstanders of my sledge when the block of ice I was using as a
support slipped from underneath my feet, and before I knew it the
sledge was out of my grasp, and I was floundering in the water of
the channel. I did the best I could.  I tore my hood from off my
head and struggled frantically.  My hands were gloved and I could
not take hold of the ice, but before I could give the "Grand
Hailing Sign of Distress," faithful old Ootah had grabbed me by the
nape of the neck, the same as he would have grabbed a dog, and with
one hand he pulled me out of the water and with the other hurried
the team across.
     He had saved my life, but I did not tell him so, for such
occurrences are taken as part of the day's work, and the sledge be
safeguarded was of much more importance, for it held, as part of
its load, the commander's sextant, the mercury, and the coils of
piano wire that were the essential portion of the scientific part
of the expedition.  My kamiks (boots of sealskin) were stripped
off, and the congealed water was beaten out of my bearskin
trousers, and with a dry pair of kamiks we hurried on to overtake
the column.  When we caught up, we found the boys gathered around
the commander, doing their best to relieve him of his discomfort,
for he had fallen into the water also, and while he was not
complaining, I was sure that his bath had not been any more
voluntary than mine had been.
     When we halted on April 6, 1909, and started to build the
igloos, the dogs and sledges having been secured, I noticed
Commander Peary at work unloading his sledge and unpacking several
bundles of equipment.  He pulled out from under his kooletah
(thick, fur outer garment) a small folded package and unfolded it. 
I recognized his old silk flag, and realized that this was to be a
camp of importance.  Our different camps had been known as Camp
Number One, Number Two, etc., but after the turning back of Captain
Bartlett, the camps had been given names such as Camp Nansen, Camp
Cagni, etc., and I asked what the name of this camp was to be-"Camp
Peary"? "This, Matthew, is to be Camp Morris K. Jesup, the last and
most northerly camp on the earth." He fastened the flag to a staff
and planted it firmly on the top of his igloo.  For a few minutes
it hung limp and lifeless in the dead calm of the haze, and then a
slight breeze, increasing in strength, caused the folds to
straighten out, and soon it was rippling out in sparkling color. 
The stars and stripes were "nailed to the Pole."
     A thrill of patriotism ran through me and I raised my voice to
cheer the starry emblem of my native land.  The Eskimos gathered
around and, taking the time from Commander Peary, three hearty
cheers rang out on the still, frosty air, our dumb dogs looking on
in puzzled surprise.  As prospects for getting a sight of the sun
were not good, we turned in and slept, leaving the flag proudly
floating above us.
     This was a thin silk flag that Commander Peary had carried on
all of his Arctic journeys, and he had always flown it at his last
camps.  It was as glorious and as inspiring a banner as any battle
scarred, bloodstained standard of the world-and this badge of honor
and courage was also bloodstained and battle scarred, for at
several places there were blank squares marking the spots where
pieces had been cut out at each of the "farthests" of its brave
bearer and left with the records in the cairns as mute but eloquent
witnesses of his achievements.  At the North Pole a diagonal strip
running from the upper left to the lower right corner was cut, and
this precious strip, together with a brief record, was placed in an
empty tin, sealed up and buried in the ice as a record for all
time.
     Commander Peary also had another American flag, sewn on a
white ground, and it was the emblem of the "Daughters of the
Revolution Peace Society." He also had and flew the emblem of the
Navy League and the emblems of a couple of college fraternities of
which he was a member.
     It was about 10 or 10:30 A.M., on the seventh of April, 1909,
that the commander gave the order to build a snow shield to protect
him from the flying drift of the surface snow.  I knew that he was
about to take an observation, and while we worked I was nervously
apprehensive, for I felt that the end of our journey had come. 
When we handed him the pan of mercury the hour was within a very
few minutes of noon.  Lying flat on his stomach, he took the
elevation and made the notes on a piece of tissue paper at his
head.  With sun-blinded eyes, he snapped shut the vernier (a
graduated scale that subdivides the smallest divisions on the
sector of the circular scale of the sextant) and with the resolute
squaring of his jaws, I was sure that he was satisfied, and I was
confident that the journey had ended.  
     Feeling that the time had come, I ungloved my right hand and
went forward to congratulate him on the success of our eighteen
years of effort, but a gust of wind blew something into his eye, or
else the burning pain caused by his prolonged look at the reflec-
tion of the limb of the sun forced him to turn aside; and with both
hands covering his eyes, he gave us orders to not let him sleep for
more than four hours.  Six hours later he purposed to take another
sight about four miles beyond, and he wanted at least two hours to
make the trip and get everything in readiness.
     I unloaded a sledge, and reloaded it with a couple of skins,
the instruments, and a cooker with enough alcohol and food for one
meal for three, and then I turned into the igloo where my boys were
already sound asleep.  The thermometer registered 29 degrees below
zero.  I fell into a dreamless sleep and slept for about a minute,
so I thought, when I was awakened by the clatter and noise made by
the return of Peary and his boys.
     The commander gave the word, "We will plant the stars and
stripes-at the North Pole!" and it was done.  On the peak of a huge
paleocrystic floeberg the glorious banner was unfurled to the
breeze, and as it snapped and crackled with the wind, I felt a
savage joy and exultation. 

                          T H E   E N D