Today, more than ever, I felt the responsibility of my position. Having gained in assurance and poise by reason of experience at previous meetings, my words were terse and well-chosen. "Men," I said, "and lady" (bowing to Sausalito, who waved a tennis shoe at me), "the end is well nigh come. The goal for which we have labored is almost in sight. The Pole, reputed inaccessible, is at hand. No longer the interminable leagues intervene. No longer do the long miles stretch between us and our object. We have annihilated space--and time!" (Cries of "Hear, Hear!") "Men of the Traprock Expedition, tried, true and trusty Traprockians, we have almost completed our journey, we are nearly there, the long-sought----" A tremendous cheer interrupted me. My companions were unable to control themselves, and my oratorical intuition told me that it was the moment to stop. With a sweeping gesture toward the North, I shouted the magic monosyllable "Mush!" and sat down. In polar travel the last ten miles are invariably the hardest. One is spent and exhausted. Ice conditions north of eighty-seven are increasingly difficult. Absolutely nothing has been done by either Canadian or United States Governments toward keeping the national highways in condition. Raftered floes, composed of sheets of twenty-foot ice, piled up like badly shuffled playing cards, often directly oppose one's progress.[13] But all things yield to an iron will. We had not come thus far to be thwarted and our nearness to success roused me to feverish energy. As I look back on that last day I am amazed at some of the things we did. It has never been my habit to dodge a difficulty and true to this principle we made straight at every barrier. There was no dodging or deviating. Some we climbed, some we tunneled (the Kawa's masts folded back along her deck), some we blew up, though I hesitated to resort to this process for the practical reason of wishing to save my ice bombs, and the more sentimental dislike of breaking the mystic silence of the North with a sound so extraneous and artificial as that of blasting. The northern silence has always seemed so pure and chaste that the thought of shattering it was extremely repugnant. It was like violating a virgin. It was, however, necessary to do this at times.[14] Toiling, sweating, cursing, singing and shouting with excitement, we fought our way foot by foot, mile by mile, over the rough ice-cap. It was marvellous to see how the Kawa behaved, how magnificently her pliant flanks adapted themselves to the jagged contours, how intelligently and naturally she oozed over and between difficulties, pressed in here, bulging out there, svelte, seal-like and delicious.