It is not easy to write about such a thing, but I knew that we were going back to civilization with the last of the great adventure stories--a story the world had been waiting to hear for nearly four hundred years, a story which was to be told at last under the folds of the Stars and Stripes, the flag that during a lonely and isolated life had come to be for me the symbol of home and everything I loved--and might never see again.
[Illustration: RETURNING TO CAMP WITH THE FLAGS, APRIL 7, 1909] The thirty hours at the Pole, what with my marchings and countermarchings, together with the observations and records, were pretty well crowded.

I found time, however, to write to Mrs.Peary on a United States postal card which I had found on the ship during the winter.

It had been my custom at various important stages of the journey northward to write such a note in order that, if anything serious happened to me, these brief communications might ultimately reach her at the hands of survivors.

This was the card, which later reached Mrs.
Peary at Sydney:-- "90 NORTH LATITUDE, April 7th.
"_My dear Jo_, "I have won out at last.

Have been here a day.