The general features of the ship had already proved themselves so well adapted for the purpose for which she was intended that no alteration in them was required.
Experience had taught me how to figure on delays in the North; but the exasperating delays of ship contractors at home had not yet entered into my scheme of reckoning.

Contracts for this work on the _Roosevelt_ were signed in the winter, and called for the completion of the ship by July 1, 1907.

Repeated oral promises were added to contractual agreements that the work should certainly be done on that date; but, as a matter of fact, the new boilers were not completed and installed until September, thus absolutely negativing any possibility of going north in the summer of 1907.
The failure of the contractors to live up to their word, with the consequent delay of a year, was a serious blow to me.

It meant that I must attack the problem one year older; it placed the initiation of the expedition further in the future, with all the possible contingencies that might occur within a year; and it meant the bitterness of hope deferred.
On the day when it became lamentably clear that I positively _could not_ sail north that year, I felt much as I had felt when I had been obliged to turn back from 87 deg.

6', with only the empty bauble "farthest north," instead of the great prize which I had almost strained my life out to achieve.