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On April 6, 1909, Robert E. Peary stood at the mathematical point on the earth's surface where North and South, East and West blend into one. For more than two decades he had fought to reach that spot. Year after year when he said good-by to his wife and children, the thought in his mind was that he might never see them again. Hunger, searing cold, punishment of mind and body to uttermost human endurance awaited him in the unknown desolation of snow and ice. Yet an almost fanatical dedication to the service of an idea drove him on.

During his worst moments of depression, he never thought of giving up. When he lay in Greely's abandoned camp at Fort Conger, suffering the agonies of the damned from frozen feet, facing the ruin of all his hopes, he wrote on the cabin wall his guiding motto—the line from Seneca: Inveniam viam aut faciam (I shall find a way or make one).

No explorer since Christopher Columbus had clung so tenaciously to an ideal, or suffered so much because of it, as Robert E. Peary. On that April day in 1909 at the top of the world, he wrote in his diary: "The Pole at last. The prize of three centuries. My dream and goal for twenty years. Mine at last! I cannot bring myself to realize it. It seems so simple and commonplace."

After thirty hours at the Pole for sun observations, he started back. Fortune and superb planning favored him. Fifteen days later, on April 22nd, he stood on land again, and the next day reached the base camp at Cape Columbia. Forty-eight hours of sleep, then on to the Roosevelt, frozen in the pack ninety-two miles away. With "the Pole on board," the ship steamed southward to what every man expected would be deserved acclaim for a job well done.

But at the first village on the Greenland coast they heard disturbing news. The Eskimos told them that Dr. Frederick A. Cook, who Peary knew was in the Arctic, had returned early in the spring and said he had gone far north. But the natives shook their heads: "That is not true. He lied. Two of our tribe were with him."

At Etah the report was confirmed. Peary, and others of his party, talked with Itukishoo and Apilah, Cook's Eskimo companions. They stoutly maintained that they had been only two marches out on the sea ice, and not beyond sight of land. Although he never expected to need them, Peary obtained their signed statements. He examined, also, one of the two light sledges Cook had used. Obviously, it had not traveled over much rough sea ice.

When the Roosevelt reached Indian Harbor, Labrador, and was in touch with the world, Peary heard that a cablegram from Lerwick in the Shetland Islands stated that Dr. Cook had reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908, and was then en route to Copenhagen on the little Danish steamer Hans Egele. Knowing the facts, it seemed incredible that Cook dared make such a claim. Peary and his men could not believe that Cook's tale would be accepted at face value by the world. Peary wired the United Press: "Cook's story should not be taken too seriously. Two Eskimos who accompanied him say he went no distance north and not out of sight of land. Other tribesmen corroborate."

On the Roosevelt indignation mounted. Peary composed another telegram, for the New York Times, which he brought to the mess room where the men were sitting. "Is it too strong?" he asked. "No, no," they shouted. Then Borup remarked, "Why don't you say he has handed the public a gold brick? That's what he's done."

MacMillan writes of this: "He, Peary, called me to his room and asked: 'What is a synonym for gold brick?' 'I don't know,' I replied. 'As far as I know there is no word just like it in the English language.'

"'It is an ugly word,' he added. 'I don't like to use it. Let's think it over for awhile!'

"We did and failed and so he wrote the radiogram which hurt him more than it did Cook."