The battle for a passage seemed hopeless. Hudson assembled the crew on decks and on bended knees prayed God to show which way to steer. Of no region had the sailors of that day greater horror than Spitzbergen. They began to recall the fearful disasters that had befallen Dutch ships here but a few years before. Those old sailors’ superstitions of the North being the realm of the Goddess of Death, came back to memory. That last narrow escape from the ice-crush left terror in the very marrow of their bones. In vain, Hudson once more suggested seeking the passage by Greenland. To the crew, the Voice of the North uttered no call. Glory was all very well, but they didn’t want glory. They wanted to go home. What was the good of chasing an Idea down the Long Trail to a grave on the frozen shores of Death? * * * * * When men begin to reason that way, there is no answer. You can’t promise them what you are not sure you will ever find. The Call is only to those who have ears to hear. You must have hold of the end of a GOLDEN THREAD before you can follow the baffling mazes of a discoverer’s faith, and these men hadn’t faith in anything except a full stomach and a sure wage. After all, their arguments were the same as the obstructions presented against every expedition to the Pole to-day, or for that matter, to any other realm of the Unknown. It was like asking the inventor to show his invention in full work before he has made it, or the bank to pay its dividends before you contribute to its capital. What reason could Hudson give to justify his faith? Standing on the quarter deck with clenched fists and troubled face, he might as well have argued with stones, or pleaded for a chance with modern money bags as talked down the expostulations of the mutineers. They were men of the kidney who will always be on the safe side. As the world knows—there was no passage across the Pole suitable for commerce. There was no justification for Hudson’s faith. Yet it was the goal of that faith, which led him on the road to greater discoveries than a dozen passages across the Pole. Faith has always been represented as one of three sister graces; cringing, meek-spirited, downtrodden damsels at their best. In view of all she has accomplished for the world in religion, in art, in science, in discovery, in commerce, Faith should be represented as a fiery-eyed goddess with the forked lightnings for her torch, treading the mountain peaks of the universe. From her high place, she alone can see whence comes the light and which way runs the Trail. Step by step, the battle has been against darkness, every step a blow, every blow a bruise driving back to the right Trail; every blood mark a milestone in human progress from lowland to upland. * * * * *