Will the America Fly to the Pole?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 11, 15 September 1909, Page 33

Will the America Fly to the Pole?

By

WALTER WELLMAN.

Illustrations from Photographs by the Author,

[NOTE. — A recent cablegram stated that the Wellman airship had started for the Pole, but was unable to proceed owing to the guide rope becoming damaged.! IN seeking the North Pole in an airship, it is no toy that we are playing with. The America is no plaything, no fragile, shortlived balloon built to run for a few hours as the wind listeth, and then succumb—but a machine, big and stout, steel-muscled, full-lunged, stronghearted, built for war, for work, for endurance, able to fight the winds that sentry the Pole and perhaps to defeat them. It is no flight of rhetoric to say that this airship is huge. It is gigantic. Its length is 183 feet, and its greatest diameter 52.5 feet. The steel car under-

Norwegian sailor, now at Danes Island for tlie winter. Bjoervig has thrice accompanied Mr. Wellman on his Arctic expeditions. In the winter of 1898-9 he was oue of two men left by Mr. Wellman at an outpost in Franz Josef Land. His companion died, and for two months of Arctic darkness he slept beside the body of iiis dead comrade, which he was unable to bury. neath it is 115 feet long, and front the bottom of this ear to the top of the gas-reservoir, the distance is 65 feet, the height of a four-storey house. The surface of the gas-reservoir or balloon is 21,000 square feet, or more than half an acre,, and the weight of the envelop of cotton, silk and rubber is two tons. When the ship sets out upon its voyage, it will embrace, all told, 20,965 pounds—ten tons —of material and cargo.

If we add the weight of the hydrogen in the reservoir—1,875 pounds—we have 22 840 pounds of men and materials moving northward in this engine of the air. Using Surplus Gas As Fuel. We need have little fear lest the lungs of our machine fail us. In point of fact, it is pretty certain that we shall have gas to spare, and it is unnecessary to give further answer to the oft-asked questions: “Can you make more gas on the way?” “Can’t you carry a supply of gas with you, compressed in steel tanks?” Actually, instead of needing new supplies of gas en route, we shall have gas "to burn.” And we propose to burn it—that is to say, burn the surplus, be it much or little. The more we work the motor, the more rapidly we reduce the weight of the load carried; and the more the load is reduced, the more gas we have to dispose, of. Ordinarily, this surplus gas is released, deliberately, through the valves into the surrounding air. But when we remembered the high calorific value of hydrogen, that its heating power per pound is more than three times that of gasolene, we said: “A pity to waste so much energy, to throw away, when it lies within ten feet of our motor. Can’t we burn it as fuel?” In response to this, Chief Engineer Vaniman rigged a motor with a two-way valve. Through one inlet came gasolene, through the other hydrogen. To experiment, he started the motor with the liquid fuel, then shut off the gasolene and turned on the gas. Instantly the motor accelerated its rate. This change from fluid to gas, and from gas back to fluid, was effected by the mere turn of a valve. The system worked perfectly. With check-valves to avert the danger of back-fire, and a small metal pipe leading to the gas-reservoir overhead, we see no reason why the surplus hydrogen cannot be used as so much fuel for our engine. And how many miles per hour can the ship make at full speed? From fifteen to eighteen statute miles, which is equivalent from thirteen to sixteen sea-miles. This, of course, is the rate of progress it could make in a calm. The French call this the “proper speed” of an airship, meaning thereby its movement by its own motive power through still air, regardless of the effect of the wind. If we reckon the speed at fifteen miles per hour, and assume that the ship must go against a wind of ten miles per hour, the progress will be five miles per hour. But if the wind is blowing ten miles per hour with the course, the progress will be twenty-five miles per hour. It is apparent that, if our engineering has been sound, and the America can make about fifteen sea-miles per hour for 150

hours with the gasolene carried, or 180 hours with both liquid and gaseous fuel, our radius of action, assuming the winds neutral, would be from 2250 to 2700 seamiles—an allowance which seems to us ample. It may be asked how we can speak with so much confidence of the -peed of an airship that has never been tried in the air, that has not even been launched. The answjer is that, just as in

marine engineering it is practicable to design a vessel with certain displacement, weight, lines, and power, and Io calculate within a fraction of a knot her speed in actual trial, so with airships the art has now so far developed that, with a little less certainty and accuracy per Imps, the performance may be known in advance. It appears, therefore, that our ship is much like a largo yacht, able to carry enough fuel for a voyage of 2000 to 2500

miles, and reasonably certain to arrive at her destination if the storms and winds do not too much hamper her, and she can avoid the dangers of shipwreck ot other disaster. There is this' difference: the voyage of the ocean yacht would be in known waters, and the adverse effect of the winds upon her progress would probably be not very great. In our case the influence of the winds o- other weather conditions might be

controlling, ami it behoves us to inquire with care what these conditions are like--11 to be and how well our craft is adapted to meet them. The Arctics the Best Field for Airships. Most people think of the \reties a- I lie region of all the world least favourable for an airship voyage. They have in mind the intense cold. the frightful

storms, of which they have read so much. They wonder how a sane man can propose to encounter such dangers in a fragile contrivance of silk, cotton, steel, and gas. But the truth tells quite another story. In point of fact, the Arctics, instead of the worst, are actually the best region in which to navigate an airship through a long distance. We do not mean that it is the best region in all

particulars—there are disadvantages as well as advantages. But comparing the polar ocean with France or America, and writing up the' debit and credit account for each, the balance strikes heavily in favour of the far northern field. The intense cold of which one instinctively thinks when the Arctics are mentioned, does not exist—in summer. In winter it is a grim reality. The Arctic summer is relatively mild. At the North Pole itself, as we know from scientific inference, the mean temperature for .Inly and August is only two or three degrees below freezing in the shade. This condition obtains in all the region lying about the Pole. Here nature has formed on a scale of a million of square miles the very conditions known in the laboratory of physics as “the melting point of ice": an ice-sheeted sea, the sun constantly in the heavens, at midnight as well as at midday, great and constant evaporation from ’wastes of snow and iee. high humidity, much cloudiness, fog, and mist. More important than the relative mildness of the temperature is the fact that over the polar ocean the summer tempi nature is the most constant to he found anywhere in the world. Storms, properly speaking, arc unknown in the Arcties in the summer months of July and August. The best meteorological records in that region were obtained by Dr. Nansen during the three years’ drift of the “Fram” .u loss the polar ‘basin. The highest rate of wind encountered in the three years was thirty-eight mile- per hour. The Ballast Question. Ballast must be serviceable in many ways. Most of it, as I have said, consists of the fuel in our tanks, but besides this we have the guide-rope, the primary purpose of which, as it hangs from the car with its lower end trailing on the surface of the earth, is to keep the airship in continuous contact with terra firma. This guide-rope is an automatic

regulator of the vertical variations of the ship carrying it, since, by simple selfadjustment, it places its weight on the ground as the ship falls, or on the car as the ship rises. In the Arctics we can use this valuable auxiliary to its full advantage, because of the absence of houses, forests, shrubbery, fences, railway and telegraph lines, and all the obstructions which civilisation puts in the way

of cross-country travelling. Important as it is to overcome these minor fluctuations, it is still more essential to prevent the airship from rising too high. In the Arctics great altitude means danger to an airship. We were certain that a guide-rope was necessary, but how best to make it was a question. Obviously, it should have

considerable weight, else it would fail to perforin the functions expected of it in the handling of such a large ship. The more weight, within reasonable limits, the more safety. An ordinary steel cable would not only cut through the crust of snow generally found upon the surface of the polar ice-floes and so offer great resistance, but it would also sink in water, and should the airship pars over the sea, the steel line would become a mere dead weight dragging the ship down —and, furthermore, all the weight would be of material useless for other purposes. What we wanted was a snake, a gliding serpent, moving over the ice-floes with the minimum of resistance, riding the snow-crust instead of cutting through

it, and swimming, if need be, upon the water. Above all, the interior of this serpent must be stuffed full of good food, well protected from loss or injury, and the weight of this useful material, in proportion to the unuseful skin of the snake, must be as great as possible. The principle was easily framed, but it remained for the ingenuity of Chief Engineer Vaniman to find the practicable means of putting the principle into effect. The Sausage Guide-rope. The serpent is made of leather, oneeighth of an inch thick, fashioned into a long tube six inches in diameter. This leather has high tensile strength, and the. snake will withstand a pull of four tons before parting—an ample margin of safety. It is divided into sections of about ten feet in length, each section a closed compartment, so that if, by chance, water should get into one. it

could not pass into its neighbours. Within the skin of the serpent we pack fcod—bacon, ham, bread, and butter, the bread inside the meat and butter. Should a little salt water get in, it could not hurt the fat meats and could not reach the ships biscuit enclosed in them. There was at least a little danger that the outer surface of this snake, in crawling a thousand miles over polar sea ice, might be abraded, torn, or disrupted. What to do about that? Again Mr. Vaniman was equal to the occasion. He riveted upon the leathern tube, all round, thousands of little scales of thin steel, one lapping the other, like the scales of a fish, protecting the leather from abrasion and forming an ideal gliding surface,

since the snake is expected to crawl but in one direction, and that, of course, as a fish swims, with the tips of his scales to the rear. This serpent or sausage guide-rope displaces 13.4 pounds of sea-water per foot of its length, itself weighs two pounds per foot, its stuffing 8.5 pounds making the -total 10.8 pounds per foot, leaving for buoyancy in water 2.6 pounds per foot, or about 20 per cent. With a snake 130 feet long, we have a grand total of 1150 pounds of useful material against only 265 of unuseful, s<> to speak, a percentage of 81. Certainly this is vastly better than carrying a simple steel cable of a thousand pounds or more, which might do fairly well as a guide-rope (though not as well as the serpent), but would prove dreadfully disappointing if, through some mischance, the crew should wish to e at it. The guide-rope serpent is made to glide with the least possible friction or resistance. Experiment has shown us that its

ntardation of the speed of the America is likely to equal about one and a-half miles per hour at the beginning of the voyage, when all of the weight of the serpent is down upon the iee, and to only half a mile per hour after thirty hours

of motoring and gasolene-burning has lifted a thousand pounds of the snake from contact with the earth. In compensation for this small loss of speed, due to friction, we gain safety of operation and more than a thousand pounds of reserve food. Sail When You Can—Anchor When You Must. One other 'appliance, somewhat similar

in form, was invented to meet a very different purpose. My former explorations had proved to me that the polar fields of ice afford an excellent surface for anchoring a balloon or airship in case of need. I have already pointed out that

our ship is to have a proper speed of about 15 knots per hour for from 150 to 180 hours. But as we do not by any means intend to confine the voyage to that number of hours, —indeed, we reckon upon twice or perhaps thrice as many in the aggregate,—the question arises as to what we intend doing during the hours the motor is not working. This brings us to one of the most important features of the project. Our plan is to use the fuel in the motor and keep the screws' in motion only in favourable winds or in the lighter of the unfavourable winds. When winds are both strong and contrary,—that is, when it would be uneconomical to use the motor, because we should get very little result in miles covered, for the fuel expended,—we propose to profit by the peculiar advantages offered by the presence of the ice-floes underneath, and anchor the ship to the surface of the earth. Thus, while unfavourable conditions prevail, we lose neither fuel nor position, but hold our own without cost. By anchorage we do not mean a fast and firm anchorage, but the employment of a simple device—and here is the second appliance I spoke of—called the retarder. It is the strange-1 ooking object that hangs from the forward part of the car, like a huge snake, covered with pointed steel scales, designed to offer the maximum of resistance in proportion to its weight, in gliding over the surface of the ice-floes. This surface, by the way, is not as rough as it is generally pictured or imagined; instead of mountains of ice and rugged masses of irregularly shaped pieces, it is, generally speaking, a series of undulating, snowy plains. The resistance of this retarder, or drag-an-

chor (for the principle is the same as that employed by sailors for many centuries), is the result of experiment on similar surfaces to a maximum of about 1000 pounds, which corresponds to the pull of the airship stationary in a wind of nineteen miles an hour. In winds of less force than this, the retarder would hold the ship firmly; in higher winds it would drag, the ship's speed being proportionate, of course, to the velocity of the wind. In a twenty-mile breeze we should lose a mile or two an hour; in a thirty-mile wind, eleven or twenty miles an hour. By using a gliding instead of a fixed anchor, we keep the strain upon tackle, car, and balloon within the limits of safety. With firm anchorage there would always exist danger that high winds or gusts might cause something to give way and involve us in serious trouble, if not actual disaster. With the retarder, all strains will be

limited, and, moreover, will be cushioned to softness through the weight and sag of the long steel cable by which the serpent is let down upon the ice. The retarder serpent is made in the same way as the guide-rope, saving that here the intention is to get the greatest maximum resistance in the snow ami ice in proportion to the weight of the device. Instead of with smooth scales, we coat this serpent with sharp, pro trading points of steel, which ar ade tc engage in the snow; taking care to have nothing so large or strong that it could by any possibility hold fast enough to make firm anchorage. I have said that we carried no useless material; but to be strictly accurate. I must explain that we do carry at the outset a small quantity of sand ballast which we throw over at the very beginning of our ascent. The airship, thus lightened, ri-es until the steel cable of

the guide-rope is lifted, and the balloon balances in the air. After that, equilibrium is maintained automatically, the guide-rope adjusting all small fluctuations, and the loss of buoyancy through the burning or the leakage of gas equalising the weight of the gasolene consumed and the food eaten. At the beginning of the voyage the retarder is carried on the airship, without touching the surface of the earth, but ready to be let down at any moment. The guide-rop • serpent is trailed on the ice or in the water. Both serpents are worked on the same cable, which passes through a winch in the <ar, and is therefore under the control of the crew. They can raise one and let t hr other down at will. At the start of the voyage, 1400 pounds is* to .lx* the weight of the guide-rope serpent in contact with the earth. But as each hour of motoring makes a net gain of 33 pounds of lifting force, instead of burning or letting out gas at this stage of the voyage, we hold the gas and use it to lift from

the earth its equivalent of the weight of the serpent. At the end of 30 hours os motoring, about 1000 pounds would have been so lifted, and would then hang vertically from the car. Now, if there should come a great accumulation of snow or frost or moisture upon the ship, tending to over-weight, we .have between the craft and the ice the combined weight of the two serpents and their operating cable, a total of more than 1500 pounds. All this eould go down upon the ice in case of need, relaying the ship of its load to that ex tent, and compensating the weight accumulated from the elements, even if tliis accumulation were much in excess of a thousand pounds. Melting the Snow-cap off the Balloon. Rain we do not fear. But wet snow sr sleet might produce a con-'iderable adhesion of weight to the envelop.

r Against this we have a second method ©i protection. Every ‘hour the motor runs, it burns 44 pounds of gasolene, releasing in combustion about 200,000 calories of heat. Four-fifths of this heat is converted into useful work, or taken up by the jacket-absorption. One-fifth, or 40,000 calories per hour, is thrown off in the exhaust which makes such a clatter in the surrounding atmosphere. It occurred to us that this was an enormous quantity of heat to throw away, since one calorie is sufficient, theoretically, to raise the temperature of a quart of water nearly two degrees Fahrenheit. Why not throw this waste heat, or part of it, up into the balloon to warm the gas, and, by keeping the skin of the reservoir a few degrees above the temperature of the surrounding 'air, melt away any snow or sleet that might adhere to the roof? This device is part of our system. In a steerable balloon, it should be noted, provision is made to pump air into the interior of the balloon, or, rather, into a balloon within the balloon, called the balloonet, for the purpose of preserving a fairly constant pressure within the gas-reservoir. The use of this pressure is to maintain the form of the balloon, to keep its skin taut, so that it may always present a smooth outward surface to the wind, without infolding. This interior pressure takes the place of stiffening frames such as have been tried with ill-success in some constructions, and it usually ranges at from two to four pounds per square foot. The method is old and highly efficient. To pump air into the interior of the balloon, which must be done quite frequently, a small independent motor ia usually carried', though the air-pump may be worked from the large motor, and also by hand, as an additional precaution. Instead of pumping in cold air, as others have done, we propose to pump in hot air. Our Unique Car. Now for the car of the America. Aeronautic engineers in France have expressed their admiration for the skill and adaptability shown in its design and construction. V-shaped, it realises the highest possible ratio of strength and rigidity to the weight of the materials employed. Inasmuch as we had to provide for the storage of about 1150 gallons of gasolene (6800 pounds), which must be carried in absolute safety and therefore in strong metal tanks, and inasmuch, further, as the weight of such tanks must be from 1000 to 1200 pounds, the question arose: Was it not possible to avoid carrying so much dead weight or useless metal, and make the tank a structural part of the car? The problem was solved by constructing a tank as long as the car itself, forming the bottom of the V, and thus becoming a stiffening and strengthening part of the structure as well as a place of storage. Tire tank is made of thin steel, divided into fourteen sections, so that if by chance there should be leakage in one, there need be no loss from the adjacent sections. As required, the gasolene can be pumped from any of the sections, thus trimming ship. What It Means to Navigate An Airship. The navigation of this ship of the air, running through an uncharted sea, is hot going to be a simple thing. For our direction we must, of course, depend largely upon the compass, though at times we can steer roughly by the sun. Our compasses must be carefully adjusted and compensated, and we shall find it necessary to “swing the ship” lor this purpose at our base, precisely as is done in preparing the compasses of any other steel ship for her voyage on the ocean. We shall carry three main compasses', two in the car, and one, a “jump” compass, swung below tlie car, beyond the influence of the steel of that structure, and designed to serve as a standard or corrector, from time to time, of the other instruments. The needle of the compass works normally in the Arctic Ocean —that is, as >t is expected to work. The magnetic polo is far to the south of the mathematical pole—l2oo miles. In other y'ords, the magnetic pole is as near Winnipeg, Canada, as to the North Pole. Prom the compass wc shall get our

direction with fair accuracy. But it is not going to be easy to write the log of the ehip. We shall know quite accurately the rate of movement imparted to the craft by the screws, but we shall be able only to guess what the influence of the winds is upon the movement, favourable or unfavourable. With a little practice we may be able to guess with fair accuracy, should the weather conditions be such as to enable us to see the icy surface of the earth. But in mists and fogs, which are quite frequent, we shall be floating in space with but faint idea of the velocity at which we are moving. We have designed a log, an instrument attached to a cable, which we let down to the earth’s surface, learning from the rate at which the cable runs out an approximation of the speed at which we are moving. But it can be nothing better than an approximation. The real test of position must, of course, be by observation of the sun for latitude and longitude—especially the former, since, in the Arctic regions, longitude is a minor factor, steadily diminishing as we approach the Pole, till, at the Pole itself, it becomes zero. It is not at all improbabe that days together may pass without our being able to make more than a guess as to our longitude; but the latitude we hope to be able to secure almost every cay. The answer to the question so often asked, “How will you know when you are at the Pole?” is here. We shall know precisely as the navigator at sea knows where he is at noon of a given day—by observation of the sun for its latitude and longitude. There is no other way. In our case, the difficulty is to get to the Pole, not to know when we are there. Once there, if conditions are favourable, we can anchor the America, and, by means of tackle we carry for the purpose, one or two of us can climb down and carry out a series of observations. A Busy Voyage. To navigate toward the Pole a craft that most people call a balloon, but which is no more a balloon than a raft is a steamship, may seem a simple matter; actually it is very complex. We must watch our barograph for our height above the earth, which we hope always to keep between two and six hundred feet; our statoscope, to know whether we are rising or falling; our various manometers, which tell us of the pressure of the gas in the reservoir and of the air in the balloonet, as steam gauges tell of the pressure in boilers. The log must be thrown every few minutes for the rate of our progress; the compasses must be watched every moment for direction; and every fifteen minutes the record or log of the voyage must be written in a book prepared for that purpose. Gasolene must be pumped, now from one and now from another section of the tank, to trim the ship, the motor and all the machinery must be watched with eagle eyes for the first signs of trouble; the valves of the aerostat must frequently be tested, to make sure there is no derangement; solar observations must be taken at every opportunity; the retarder and

guide-rope serpents must be worked according to circumstances; and, abo re al in fogs or. thick weather all ears must be strained for the first signals from the automatic alarm which is to tell ue of our too near approach to the earth, since contact of our delicate steel car with the rough ice-floes might spell destruction. Such an automatic alarm we have; it is simple and should be effective; a steel battle containing mercury is suspended by a cord 100 feet long; when the ship is within 100 feet of the earth, the bottle touches, is tilted as it drags, the mercury in the bottom of the receptacle makes contact, an electrical circuit is established, and a bell is set ringing in the navigating deck. On the whole, we are likely to be quite busy. The Personnel of the Crew. Our intention is always to have three men on duty—the navigator in charge, a man in the engine-room, a third to attend to the winch which controls the retarder and guide-rope serpent and other apparatus. This will necessitate at least eighteen hours per day for each man, with the man off duty liable to be called into action at any moment. There will not be much sleeping during the cruise of the America; no one will wish to sleep more than is absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together. We shall have comfortable bunks, and hot meals are to be served if we can find time to cook them. The three men who, together with the writer, will constitute the crew of the America, are provisionally as follows:—First, Major Henry Blanchard Hersey, member of the Rough Riders, inspector in the United States Weather Bureau, representative with the Expedition, last year and this, of the Government and of the National Geographic Society of Washington. He was aide to Lieutenant Frank Lahm in winning the James Gordon Bennett Cup in Europe in September, 1906, and is executive officer and scientific observer of this Expedition. The second is Melvin Vaniman, an American, now resident in Paris, where he has built a mechanical flight machine which shows great promise, and where, for the past nine months, his skill and energy as designer end constructor have been devoted to the rebuilding of the airship America, which contains nothing whatever of last year’s construction except a part of the envelop of the gas-reservoir. The third man will probably be either Dr. Walter N. Fowler, of Bluffton, Indiana, surgeon of the expedition last year and this, and also a competent mechanic, or Felix Riesenberg, of Chicago, now in charge of the expedition headquarters at Spitzbergen—sailor, navigator, scientific observer. With a crew of only four, each man must be a specialist; not only that, every one must be an understudy in the parts of all the others. How long do we expect the voyage to take? We have only a vague idea. With a south wind of 10 or 15 miles per hour, it would be practicable to go to the Pole in a single day. With calm or neutral winds, it would take two days. With winds directly contrary, blowing at the mean force of the region and season, ten miles per hour, it would take five days. With winds blowing always contrary and at a mean force considerably higher than the general average, we could not get there at all. Four Strings to Our Bow. We intend to return. We have no desire to pose as martyrs. There are four strings to our bow, as follows:—

First.—We believe we have a fair eha nee to go to the Pole and back to our headquarters or to land within ten days or two weeks from our departure, navigating with our own power as a true ship of the air. Second.—lf that fails, and the motor and fuel serve only to carry us to the Pole, after the gasolene is exhausted we can use motor and machinery, much of the ear and tank, and many other appurtenances, for ballast, throwing them overboard piecemeal, and thus counteract the losses of lifting force through leakage, and keep the America afloat in the air, simply as a drifting balloon, for a total of from 25 to 35 days from the start. And in that length of time the chance that the wind would drift us far to the south is a very good one indeed, since the distance from the Pole to land and safety is a mean of only 860 miles, which a fresh breeze might compass in two or three days. Third.—Should the airship serve to carry us to or near to the Pole we have in our equipment a complete sledging outfit, with a dozen picked dogs from Siberia, and we believe that within the two months or more of light remaining it would be practicable to sledge back over the ice to Spitzbergen or Greenland. Sledge expeditions propose to travel from land to the Pole and back again; if the airship takes us to the Pole we have but the return journey to make, with the drift of ice helping us on our way, an average of from two to four miles per day. Fourth.—Thanks to the increased carrying capacity of our enlarged airship, and to the economical disposition we have made of the serpent principle, we are able to carry with us enough food, so that if by any chance the America should be blown to some remote spot in the great unexplored area, far from any land, of if accident or ill conditions or other circumstances should make it inadvisable to attempt a sledging return in the autumn, we can pass the entire winter where we come down, making a snug hut of the immense quantities of cloth and other material of which the ship is composed, and leading the simple life, hibernating like bears, without fear of starvation, subsisting wholly upon the supplies taken with us. If this should happen, we should sledge back the following spring, when polar-ice travelling is bet ter than in the autumn, and have enough food to carry us till the first of June. In anticipation of all possible emergencies, we are taking with us the latest, most minute and authoritative data, maps and charts of all lands surrounding the Pole, procured through the cooperation of our own and other governments and of various geographical societies—information as to tribes game, outposts, trails, timber, water-courses, depots of supply in Franz Josef, Novaya Zemlya, the great stretch of Siberian coast, Greenland, the northern part of British America and its outlying islands, and Alaska. No matter where the wheel of fortune may drop us, we hope we are prepared for all eventualities—food enough for a wintering in our own larder, and much more food, if nature favours, in our rifles and cartridges. Should it be necessary, we could pass the long night of the winter at the North Pole itself, be it land or ice-sheeted sea—the six months’ night, with the moon, the stars and the glorious aurora for our illuminant—and there await the coming of the six months’ sun, before setting out on the long journey homeward.