“Below them was the frozen, snow-covered ocean, with the ice broken up into various formations of ice fields, indicating that there was no land about. Byrd flew the plane in a circle several miles in diameter, with the Pole as a center. His field of view was 120 miles in diameter. All this while he was flying south, since all directions away from the Pole are south. And now, his purpose accomplished, his hardest task faced him. He had to fly back to Spitzbergen. “Soon after he left the Pole, the sextant that he was using slid off the chart table, breaking the horizon glass. He had to navigate the whole trip back by dead reckoning! With the oil fast spurting out, and the motor threatening to stop any minute, and no sextant to show his position, Byrd had his hands full. They lost track of time. Minutes seemed like hours, hours like ages. Then they saw land dead ahead. It was Spitzbergen! Byrd had flown into the unknown, 600 miles from any land, had turned about, and come back to the very spot from which he had started. “Maybe you don’t realize what wonderful navigating this was. But anybody who has navigated a plane by dead reckoning knows that it was a feat that called for great skill. “Nobody was prouder of what Byrd and Bennett had done than the men who had worked so hard to make the trip a success, and who had stayed behind at Spitzbergen, without glory or reward except in knowing that they had been a necessary feature in the success of that journey. The whistle of the Chantier blew a shrill whistle of welcome. The men ran to greet Byrd and Bennett, and carried them in triumph on their shoulders. Among the first to greet them were Amundsen and Ellsworth, whom Byrd had beaten in the race to be the first to cross the Pole by air. But they shook hands with vigor. They were glad that it was Byrd who had beaten them, if it had to be anybody. Byrd affects people that way. He’s just as well liked after successes as before them. That’s the sort he is. “They were pretty glad to see him when he got back to the United States, too. There were plenty of whistles blowing, plenty of ticker tape, and parades for the returning hero. But Dick Byrd stayed modest through all of it. In the first place, he never gets fussed. He isn’t a southern gentleman for nothing. And in the second place, he realized that the shouting wasn’t so much for him as it was for the thing that he did. He had brought the United States the honor of sending the first men over the Pole. And the United States was applauding the deed, not himself. But he seems to have forgotten that if it hadn’t been for his years of planning, striving and struggling the deed never would have been accomplished.