Thyra: a Romance of the Polar Pit

Ice--ice on every side, north and south, east and west, as far the eye can see--not the broad, level floes of the Arctic Circle, with here and there a majestic berg towering skyward like some gigantic crystal cathedral, but a vast stretch of ponderous floe-bergs, ridged with jagged hummocks, their broken surface covered with snow, fast turning to slush under the blaze of the six months' sun. Here and there a narrow blue lane winds through the frozen wilderness, widening in places, closing in places, as the fragments of the great pack, separated by the spring break-up, drift south across the Polar Basin.

Such was the icy waste that had been our sole landscape for full eight months. In the fall of 1896, confident of success, we had started out across the Polar pack from our base camp on the north of Franz Josef Land. Never had a dash for the Pole been more carefully planned. Our equipment was as near perfect as money and experience could make it, and every member of our party was a trained athlete, thoroughly inured to Arctic travel. Lieutenant Balderston and his trusty negro sergeant, Black, each stood over six feet two, clear measure, while I myself could claim the negro's great girth and an inch more of height. As to Thord Borson, the Icelander, he was a veritable giant, seven and a half feet tall, and broad in proportion.