Every possible contingency that years of experience had taught me to expect was provided for, every weak spot guarded, every precaution taken.

I had spent a quarter of a century playing the Arctic game.

I was fifty-three years old, an age beyond which, perhaps, with the one exception of Sir John Franklin, no man had ever attempted to prosecute work in the Arctic regions.

I was a little past the zenith of my strength, a little lacking, perhaps, in the exuberant elasticity and elan of more youthful years, a little past the time when most men begin to leave the strenuous things to the younger generation; but these drawbacks were fully balanced perhaps by a trained and hardened endurance, a perfect knowledge of myself, and of how to conserve my strength.

I knew it was my last game upon the great Arctic chess-board.