THE LIFE POLAR EXPEDITION

En route with “Life’s” Bicycle Expedition to the North Pole.—May 17.

We are now just between Woodlawn and Mt. Vernon, at a point where there seems to be some sort of road-digging going on. This means that we shall have to sit down and wait for them to finish, or else go back and take a roundabout route. We are just a little discouraged.

“Chief,” Lieut.-Commander Connelly said to me as we were pedalling through Morrisania (168th Street), “do you ever have any doubts about our catching up with the others—Amundsen and Byrd, I mean?”

I felt a strange little chill creep around my heart. Was this mutiny?

“Have you heard any of the men talking?” I asked, without looking at him.

“Well, no, not exactly,” he replied, “but Ensign Thermaline asked me yesterday how long I figured out that it would be before we sighted one of the other expeditions.”

“You can tell Ensign Thermaline,” I said, “that if he will keep his feet pedalling ’round and ’round just as fast as he can and maintain his balance, the rest of us will do the same.”

Lieut.-Commander Connelly looked at me with tears in his eyes. “Aye, aye, sir,” was all that he said, but it spoke volumes.

From Mott Haven, where we spent the night, we have pedalled due north over the Grand Concourse, stopping only once at a repair shop to get a new thumb-piece for Ensign Thermaline’s bell. Ensign Thermaline had been using the bell almost constantly since leaving 57th Street, being one of the most cautious pilots in the expedition.

A peculiarity of the country which we all have noticed since crossing over the Harlem River is the rows upon rows of large apartment houses which have sprung up along the route. At first none of us spoke of it, but finally Lieut.-Commander Connelly could keep his thoughts to himself no longer. “Have you noticed the large number of apartment houses along the way?” he asked. We all admitted that we had.

In front of one of these apartment houses an interesting sight met our eyes. A little boy was seen riding along in what looked like a very small automobile and it was in effect really an automobile except that it was propelled by the little boy’s feet, which were in direct contact with the sidewalk. Some members of the expedition were in favor of stopping and getting the little boy to join, but wiser counsel prevailed and we decided that it would take him too long to get his winter things packed and that we ought not to incur any more delays than we should run into in the natural course of events. “He would have been cute, though,” said Lieut-Commander Connelly wistfully.

Just the other side of Williamsbridge we ran into an obstacle which for a while threatened to hold us up indefinitely. Right in our path we came to a high wall surrounding a reservoir. We sent Ensign Thermaline up to take soundings and he returned, making a long face, and reporting that the reservoir was practically ten feet deep.

“What a place to build a reservoir anyway!” I said, and the other joined me in my disgust.

Fording the darned thing being out of the question, we decided that it would be better to take one of the roads which seemed to lead around it. We chose the one to the left because left is Lieut.-Commander Connelly’s favorite direction. And Dame Fortune was with us in our choice, for it led, after a while, right into the Bronx River Parkway, which was just where we wanted to be. Had we taken the road to the right, there is no telling where we should have ended up.⁠[1]⁠

It was in passing Woodlawn Cemetery that we got into the discussion which is still raging as we sit by the roadside before Mt. Vernon. The sight of the miles and miles of monuments in Woodlawn depressed Lieut.-Commander Connelly and set him thinking.

“Man’s span is so short,” he said, drawing up alongside my “bike” (as we call our wheels). “Man’s span is so short that it seems hardly worth all the fuss and pother of trying, doesn’t it?” he whispered.

“I think that word is ‘bother,’” I said.

“Which word?” he asked.

“The word you called ‘pother,’” I replied, a little cruelly, I am afraid.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“As sure as one can be of anything in this old world,” I said.

“That’s just it,” the lieutenant-commander returned, “what can one be sure of? We are born, grow up, make our little plans—and what sad, brave little plans they are, too—and then just as we think we are succeeding”—the young explorer stopped and looked at the rows of tombstones on our left.

“I know, Lieutenant-Commander,” I said, sympathetically. “You don’t have to say it.”

And so we rode on in silence, until we reached this sort of digging-up they are doing in the road. Then I said: “Oh, the devil!” And at this rather pat climax to a discussion on philosophy, we both laughed.

But if we are held up very long here it will be no laughing matter, for in the papers we read that Amundsen is already on his way to the Pole from Spitsbergen.

(The brave boys of the “Life” Polar Expedition are pedalling furiously in a northerly direction and expect to reach Mt. Vernon any day now. Another despatch from Commander Benchley will appear next week.)

FOOTNOTES: