Up to this stage in the march Peary had been whipper-in, but in the last stages he led the van. And during the concluding stages it must be admitted that fortune smiled upon the travellers. True, that in this almost breathless rush for the Pole "leads" were not entirely absent, but such as were encountered did not seriously delay the marches. As, however, Peary got nearer and nearer to the Pole, the fear that the prize might at the last moment be snatched away from him by an impassable "lead" was constantly with him. On 5th April the party reached 89° 25' N., and were within 35 miles of the Pole. So near, indeed, were they, that Peary writes: "By some strange shift of feeling the fear of the "leads" had fallen from me completely. I now felt that success was certain...." And his confidence was justified. On April 6, 1909, Peary, with his coloured assistant, Matthew Henson, and the four Eskimos, reached the Pole, and there the leader of this successful party wrote the following note;-- "90° N. Lat., North Pole, 6_th April_ 1909. "I have to-day hoisted the national ensign of the United States of America at this place, which my observations indicate to be the North Pole axis of the earth, and have formally taken possession of the entire region and adjacent, for and in the name of the President of the United States of America. I leave this record and United States flag in possession. "ROBERT E. PEARY, "United States Navy." The explorers spent thirty hours at the Pole, and then started upon the long journey back to the coast of Grant Land. By 23rd April, favoured by beautiful weather, the party had reached Cape Columbia; so favoured, indeed, had they been that Ootah remarked on their arrival that "the devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife, or we should never have come back so easily." On that same day Peary wrote in his diary: "I have got the North Pole out of my system after twenty-three years of effort, hard work, disappointments, hardships, privations, more or less suffering, and some risks." The joy of success, tremendous as it was, could not but be dimmed by the news that awaited Peary on his return to the ship. For Marvin had lost his life, on the return journey, in trying to cross some young and treacherous ice, and the loss of this gallant and able man illustrates all too sadly the "some risks" of which Peary wrote--risks which all explorers in greater or less measure have to run. As a conclusion to this chapter of adventure and determined effort, the words of that prince of explorers, Fridtjof Nansen, seem peculiarly appropriate. "From first to last," he wrote, "the history of Polar exploration is a single mighty manifestation of the power of the Unknown over the mind of man." IV THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (_Map_, p. 112.)