One vessel only, Nansen's _Fram_, had been farther north, but she had drifted there stern foremost, a plaything of the ice.

Again the little black, strenuous _Roosevelt_ had proven herself the champion.
There are some feelings which a man cannot express in words.

Such were mine as the mooring lines went out onto the ice foot at Cape Sheridan.
We had kept the scheduled time of our program and had negotiated the first part of the difficult proposition--that of driving a ship from New York to a point within striking distance of the Pole.

All the uncertainties of ice navigation--the possible loss of the _Roosevelt_ and a large quantity of our supplies--were at an end.

Another source of gratification was the realization that this last voyage had further accentuated the value of detailed experience in this arduous work.
Notwithstanding the delays which had sometimes seemed endless, we had made the voyage with only a small percentage of the anxieties and injury to the ship which we had experienced on the former upward journey in 1905.
Lying there, with the northern bounds of all known lands--except those close to us--lying far to the south, we were in a position properly to attack the second part of our problem, the projection of a sledge party from the ship to the Pole itself.