Читать книгу Beyond Adventure - Roy Chapman Andrews - Страница 26

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It was in the early winter of 1906 that I met Peary for the first time. I was newly come to the American Museum of Natural History, a young man just out of college. For years Peary had stood as my greatest hero. He was to lecture at the museum in the evening, and I waited behind the huge meteorite Ahnighito, then in the foyer, until he arrived. He walked in alone. As he came opposite Ahnighito, he paused for a moment and ran his hand over the surface of the enormous mass of iron. A faraway look came into his eyes and I knew he was seeing again the crashing waves and the plunging ship battling for her life against the fury of the sea, when he brought the meteorite from Greenland. Then he went on to the president's office.

I hurried into the auditorium to a seat in the front row. Half an hour later, music sounded from somewhere in the Indian Hall, and Peary walked beside Morris K. Jesup, president of the museum, down the aisle and onto the platform. When he began to speak I seemed to go into another world—a world of snow and howling blizzards, of shifting ice and towering bergs. His story was simply told, with no heroics, but behind it one sensed the fatigue and suffering and hourly peril of that fruitless dash for the Pole. I felt, with him, the sickening disappointment when he knew that even though he had reached the "fartherest north" ever attained by man, he had failed again in the quest which he had almost strained his life out to achieve.

Next day I met him and shook his hand. He came with the director of the museum to the department of preparation, where I was working. Dr. Bumpus introduced me. I could hardly speak. To him, I was only an embarrassed young man; to me, he was the embodiment of all my youthful dreams.

A few months later I saw him again. For the next polar expedition an auxiliary ship, the Erik, was to go north to Etah, Greenland, with coal and additional supplies. The American Museum had received a considerable sum of money from Mr. George Bowdoin to provide an exhibition of water mammals. I had been studying whales, and the director asked Peary if he might send me on the Erik to collect seals, walrus, narwhale, and other porpoises. Peary said he would like to talk to me. Dr. Bumpus called me to his office and left us together. For a few moments I was tongue-tied, but he smiled and asked about my work on whales. He was keenly interested in natural history, he said, and had contributed largely to his college expenses by taxidermy, which he taught himself. That put me at my ease, for I had done the same. At the end of half an hour, he said, yes, I could go on the Erik, and he would see that facilities were given for collecting, so far as possible.

I left treading on air, with the memory of his parting smile and warm handclasp. But my jubilation was short-lived. Not long after our conversation word came that the Roosevelt would not be ready until the following year, and the expedition must be postponed. In the meantime, I was sent to Alaska by the museum on a whaling cruise, and could not return until three months after the Erik sailed. I was bitterly disappointed at not being able to see Peary in the field, but on their return I came to know him and all the members of the expedition well, except Ross Marvin, who lost his life in the Arctic.

Bob Bartlett, Ross Marvin, Donald MacMillan, Dr. Goodsell, George Borup, Mat Henson! They were a wonderful group, hand-picked, each for some special qualification that would help put the American flag at the North Pole. George Borup became my most intimate friend. He was a young Yale graduate, about my own age, son of an army officer, and had distinguished himself in college athletics, particularly in the two-mile run. After returning from the North, he studied in the department of geology at the American Museum of Natural History. I met him there. His devotion to Peary and love of the Arctic were almost religious in their intensity. We used to talk hour after hour about the North Pole expedition and his plans for the future. He tried to entice me to join him and Don MacMillan in the proposed exploration of Crocker Land, but I had a project for Asia. George was drowned one brilliant Sunday afternoon in 1912 while canoeing with a friend on Long Island Sound. After surviving the dangers of the polar ice, he lost his life within sight of his summer home! My eldest son, George Borup Andrews, is named for him.