Offering Sausalito my arm we climbed the slope together. The others arrived en masse. Swank, Plock, Sloff, they were all like children playing a game of prisoner's base, with the Pole as home. Poor Whinney was "it." In the excitement of the moment I had forgotten him. He was a pitiful spectacle as he came tap-tapping his way across the ice, feeling each step with his cane. We watched him in silence until I saw that he was going to miss the Pole entirely and if not stopped would soon be bound south again for an indefinite period. Tenderly Sausalito and I led him to the cairn while her rich voice murmured comfort in his ear. He was beside himself with emotion and hot tears kept welling from under his goggles. "The touch of a woman's hand!" he sobbed, as he smoothed mine with his. Frissell's arrival was characteristic. He made the last sixty yards between the Kawa and the Pole on a pogo stick--a new--in fact the only--record for an event of this kind. Second only to ourselves was the Kawa and willing hands soon hauled her across the intervening distance and made her fast. The great objective of my polar push had been gained and with a reverent heart I called the men together for short but appropriate ceremonies. After a prayer of thanksgiving by Miskin, we sang as much of the Star Spangled Banner as we could remember and ate a silent toast to the memory of great explorers who had come and gone. I then made a few appropriate remarks, outlining the progress of polar travel from Norse days down to the present and we then proceeded to the picturesque "planting of the flags." It was a charming picture in the amber sunlight, not unlike the final chorus of some great operatic spectacle in which the nations of the earth are gathered together. Forming in a circle we marched slowly about the cairn singing the ancient song: "Nordenskold--Nordenskold--helvig am trein," each man planting his flag at the close of a verse, in the order named: Traprock, U.S.A., Swank, Sons of American Revolution; Whinney, Guidon of the Derby Fencibles (sometimes called the "Desperate Derbies"); Sausalito, Lucy Stone League; Frissell, Dutch Treat Club of New York; Plock, Explorers Union; Miskin, National Geographic Society; Triplett, New Bedford Chamber of Commerce; Sloff, Ass. Astronomers of America; Wigmore, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities; Dane, Egypt. With the cairn thus gaily decorated and the Kawa's full alphabet of signal flags flying fore and aft spelling the word "Victory," the formal ceremonies were over and I gave the order for complete rest, relaxation and enjoyment.