Fortunately I did not know that Fate was even then clenching her fist for yet another and more crushing blow.
While trying to possess my soul in patience despite the unjustified delay, there came the heaviest calamity encountered in all my arctic work--the death of my friend, Morris K.Jesup.Without his promised help the future expedition seemed impossible.

It may be said with perfect truth that to him, more than to any other one man, had been due the inception and the continuance of the Peary Arctic Club, and the success of the work thus far.

In him we lost not only a man who was financially a tower of strength in the work, but I lost an intimate personal friend in whom I had absolute trust.

For a time it seemed as if this were the end of everything; that all the effort and money put into the project had been wasted.

Mr.Jesup's death, added to the delay caused by the default of the contractors, seemed at first an absolutely paralyzing defeat.
Nor was it much help that there was no lack of well-meaning persons who were willing to assure me that the year's delay and Mr.Jesup's death were warnings indicating that I should never find the Pole.
Yet, when I gathered myself together and faced the situation squarely, I realized that the project was something too big to die; that it never, in the great scheme of things, would be allowed to fall through.