Everything in my life appeared to have led up to this day.

All my years of work and all my former expeditions were merely preparations for this last and supreme effort.

It has been said that well-directed labor toward a given end is an excellent kind of prayer for its attainment.

If that be so, then prayer has been my portion for many years.

Through all the seasons of disappointment and defeat I had never ceased to believe that the great white mystery of the North must eventually succumb to the insistence of human experience and will, and, standing there with my back to the world and my face toward that mystery, I believed that I should win in spite of all the powers of darkness and of desolation..