"It was the last night of our stay at the island," Peary wrote, "a night of such savage wildness as is possible only in the Arctic regions.... The wild gale was howling out of the depths of Melville Bay through the _Hope's_ rigging and the snow was driving in horizontal lines. The white slopes of the hill down which the meteorite had been brought showed a ghastly grey through the darkness; the fire, round which the fur-clad forms of the Eskimo were grouped, spread its bright red glare for a short distance; a little to one side was a faint glow of light through the skin wall of a solitary tupik. Working about the meteorite was my own little party, and, in the foreground, the central figure, the _raison d'être_ of it all, the 'Saviksoah,' the 'Iron Mountain,' towering above the human figures about it and standing out, black and uncompromising. While everything else was buried in snow, the Saviksoah was unaffected. The great flakes vanished as they touched it, and the effect was very impressive. It was as if the giant were saying, 'I am apart from all things; I am heaven-born, and still carry in my heart some of the warmth of those long-gone days before I was hurled upon this frozen desert.' To strengthen this fancy that the meteorite still held some of its celestial fire and feeling, if a sledge, ill aimed in the darkness at wedge or block, chanced to strike it, a spouting jet of scintillating sparks lit the gloom, and a deep note, sonorous as a bell, a Polar tocsin, or the half-pained, half-enraged bellow of a lost soul, answered the blow." Yet another year--1897--saw Peary again at work, this time with the meteorite ready alongside the natural wharf. It was the month of August that the _Hope_ made fast opposite the meteorite, but already the ice had begun to drift into the bay, as though even that were going to dispute the right of man to carry off the mighty trophy. Without loss of a day, work was commenced and a bridge of huge timbers was constructed along which to warp the mass from the shore on to the ship. The bridge completed, forty-eight hours were consumed in getting the mass on to it. The pressure of its enormous weight put so great a strain on the woodwork that it visibly gave as the mass came on to it, and more than once a collapse seemed imminent. Once a slip of less than an inch upset the equilibrium of everything to such an extent that the stays and supports were apparently within an ace of giving way. It was a curious coincidence that this single slip occurred at a moment and a place where, had anything given way, there was nothing to prevent the mass rolling over the edge of the rock and sinking, presumably for ever, into deep water. As it turned out, the slip was taken up in time to avert disaster, and thereafter the mass was forced, slowly but surely, on to the deck of the ship.