Polar Pilgrims

Coming. The Norwegian trawler Albr. W. Selmer puffed into Horten, Norway, late one evening last week. The harbor was alive with small craft; the town had waited up. As explorer Roald Amundsen and his five comrades stepped ashore, home at last from their try for the North Pole by airplane, the night roared with cheers. Milling crowds, pelting roses, shouting greetings, escorted the pilgrims to the Navy Club, where a midnight banquet awaited them. This feast lasted well into the dawn, when newspaper photographers swarmed in to begin the new day with pictures. Sleepy though he was, Pilot Lincoln Ellsworth of Manhattan obligingly posed in the cockpit of the N-25, Rolls-Royce-motored seaplane which had carried the party back to Spitsbergen from a forced bivouac on the ice-floes 157 miles from the Pole.

About noon, the N25 took the air again, bearing all six adventurers. A guard of honor of five planes flew with it up the bay to Oslo, circling away as the N25 described a triumphant arc and settled to the water offthe "honor pier." A navy cutter came alongside, battleships and Fort Akershus boomed salute, the populace of Oslo yelled and waved a welcome. Director Thormessen of the Norwegian Aero Club rushed forward, embraced each of the six fervently. There were speeches in a pavilion decked as for a returning Caesar with streaming flags and two gilt, victory-winged pylons; officials, including the Burgomaster and the President of the Storting (Parliament) became apoplectic with admiration and praise; Amundsen replied that he was speechless. More cheering, hymns, the national anthem.

Then to the palace in horse carriages, guarded by sailors and naval cadets. King Haakon was effusive, bestowed decorations. Then to the Grand Hotel, all traffic in the streets coming to a halt while the cortege passed. Out on a balcony, Amundsen smiled his thanks; soon after, he sat down with the others to a handsome luncheon furnished by the Aero Club. More speeches; The Star Spangled Banner in honor of Pilot Ellsworth.

In September, Explorer Amundsen will lecture formally in Oslo, then come to the U. S. to reap the bumper lecture-crop he needs to go on another Polar pilgrimage for Science.

Going. In Battle Harbor, Labrador, a place of gray rock domes, fretted shoreline, low islands: and a horizon studded with icebergs, the Bowdoin, flagship of Explorer Donald B. MacMillan's Polar expedition, lay at anchor waiting for her consort, the Peary. When the latter turned up, she explained that a fierce storm near the Strait of Belle Isle had forced her to heave to for fear of damage to the expedition's three Navy planes which she carried lashed to her decks. Board screens had been erected against the hammering seas and no damage was done.

While waiting, the Bowdoin continued experimenting with her short-wave radio equipment for daylight messages. Amateurs in Florida, Alabama and Ohio reported they had heard the messages, one of which ran: "The loudest huskie dog chorus in the world is most active at 3 o'clock in the morning. . . . All well." The Chicago office of E. F. MacDonald Jr., MacMillan's second in command, reported the party's short-wave equipment was a proven success, overcoming the daylight static that obstructs long-wave communication. The explorers' radio contact with the outer world is valuable for more reasons than the scientific and journalistic. It fortifies them against that greatest trial of the Arctic, solitude. On previous trips, MacMillan has forbidden members of his party to talk to one another during the day or at meals. Topics of conversation can last only so long among men thrown constantly together. When they die away, morale sinks.

Steam was raised on the Bowdoin and the Peary. They waited for fogs and the barometer to rise that they might proceed to Hopedale, their last stopping-point on Labrador before the crossing to the Greenland coast.