The right . To . And now we take you and fancy to one of the most famous institutions of its kind, the World Adventurers Club. Here we meet men who have braved every danger that the world has to offer. Men who have battled the polar seas and the tropical jungles. It is the custom of this club to hold a series of informal meetings in which one member is called upon to tell the most thrilling experience of his career. And now the World Adventurers Club extends a cordial invitation to you to draw up your chair and hear a story of the Royal Road to Adventure. And today they still talk clear their tale of faith and love. Ring out, sing out, what a bell, so don't you sound. We need your strength, our fears will come. Steal forth in action, steal the staff of our world's name. Do your song, do your song, how faith so strong. Ring out, sing out, bell of the world's own. Gentlemen of the World Adventurers Club. Tonight gentlemen, it's my privilege to point an accusing finger at one of you and say, tonight you tell us of your strange adventure in a strange land. And now I'm going to call upon Captain Alexander Hales of the North Pole and all points south. Well gentlemen, I've spent my share of time north of the Arctic Circle. I've never been in Africa, I've never seen a cannibal, I've never hunted elephants or tigers. But I believe I can describe to you one personal experience that will not be out of place in the archives of this club. My only trip over the actual North Pole was by air. It was a thrill indeed, but nothing half as thrilling as a party I led in search of the ill-fated Morton expedition. You all remember Captain Robert Morton I suppose? Oh yes, yes, he went in the Arctic many years ago and never came back. That's right, he was lost in the night. That's correct, Bob Morton had been my friend. At the time I tried to dissuade him from attempting an Arctic expedition. He had an inadequate steamer and science had not made the progress in those days that it has today in assisting the pioneers. There was no radio and no dependable base of supplies, but Morton was not to be stopped. He sailed into the uncharted polar seas and that was the last the world heard of him. That was quite a number of years ago, wasn't it? Yes, about thirty. After Morton had been given up for lost, I succeeded in organising a relief expedition. And after the usual delays, my party set sail for the frozen North. Did you have any idea where Morton had gone after he was last heard from? Only the vague notion that he was attempting to reach Patrick Island, a little known point of land usually blocked by ice flows. We headed in that general direction and finally reached the ice barrier that meant the limit of navigation. Nothing but a trackless waste of ice from that point on. I judged that Morton must have found another means of getting his ship further toward the pole. Probably he'd struck more to the east. So I organised a land party, if I may call it that, and leaving eight men on the boat, the rest of us started out across the frozen expanse of ice and snow. We experienced no unusual difficulties at first and covered a good many miles in four days, leaving food and extra clothing buried at designated points in case we had to fight our way back. That must have been a thrill. It was indeed. But a week after leaving the boat, it became a bit more of a thrill than I bargained for. The worst storm? Yes, an arctic blizzard of the worst kind. In my party were McGee, my lieutenant, three other white men and several eskimos. In order to cover a wider expanse of territory, McGee and I separated from the others and worked perhaps two to four miles to the east. With just the two of us and the team of husky dogs, we were taking a long chance, and the break of the luck hit us at the wrong moment. This arctic blizzard came up. The snow began in flurries and then finally in literal sheets, so that it was impossible to see more than six feet ahead. We lost our bearings in less than a minute of this battling with the elements. The wind was howling. We had to shout to make ourselves heard as we stumbled and plunged on and on. Bark! Bark! Bark! Stick to it, McGee! We've got to get back to the rest of the party! Keep bearing to the left! I think that's our best chance. We ought to locate them in less than an hour. That looks like something ahead of us! Where? Which way? No, no, more to your left! But don't see it, too! Something's moving! I can't make it out! Hello there! The seals! They're seals, not men! Then we must be near open water! Oh, impossible! We're four days inside the ice barrier! There must be open water, or the seals wouldn't be here! Great Scott! Look! Look there! Hold on a minute! Where's the rifle? It's on the pack! Stop! Stop the jeeps! The dogs are running! All of them! Stop them! They smell the bears! They're afraid! There goes our rifles and supplies! No way to stop them now! Those bears are between us and the rest of the party! We have to go round them! Let's head off to the right! I think they're running after us! Great Scott! There must be twenty of them! Run for it! Head for that breach ahead of us! Get out of their sight! Here comes a whole lot of them! Faster, man! Faster! Look! There's a second ray of ice! Let's get behind that! Right you are! Sorry, bears! This is just a flying visit! They are not satisfied! I don't think they'll follow us now! The polar bear is not a man killer unless cornered! Hey! Hey! Look! Look there! A what? Why, a ship! A boat! But it's not our boat! No! It's Morton's! It's the Morton expedition! We're safe! Hello! Hello, Morton! Hello! Come on, let's make it faster, Hale! No! Wait! Look! See anything clear about that boat? Why, yes! Yes, it's off keel! It's cracked! Ice bound! And there's nobody on it! It's been jammed in the ice! It's a mere skeleton of a boat! Morton must have abandoned it! He must have tried to go over the ice! It's stripped! Here, time on the deck! I had to storm the feet of the ribbon! No wonder Morton left it! Why, look! Abandoned! November 8, 1902! R.M. That's him! Yeah! What's that? Ice! The ice flow is closing in on this boat! It's going to be ground to splinters! Why, it's done for! It'll break up any minute! Let's get off quick! The ice has done its work! This won't last another five minutes in this storm! We'll smash the kindling one! No good for us! We can't stay here! If Morton left this storm as we've... It means the ice barrier again... We'll have to risk it! There's stormed everything! What, if we only have the dark team? Look! Look fast! There's a tight boy-oaks! Yes! The whole ship is being crushed to bits! The ice flow is driving right over it! Come on, McGee! Come on! It's not a minute away! We must use every ounce of strength to get back to our own boat! And get out before we too are locked in the arctic! The ice found means death! It's a race for the elements! Well, that was interesting, yes. That would have been just too much for me! Not for me! Give me the jungle! That's something I never expect to see! What about Robert Morton? You found a ship! Did you find any trace of him? Not a bit. All I can believe is that when he abandoned the doomed ship, he must have gone over the ice in the hope of reaching Patrick Island. He never got there. And I can only say that he must have perished in a storm similar to that which McGee and I battled for our lives. Did you find the remainder of your party? Only a few. Most of the men were unable to withstand the storm. Only about half of the land expedition got back to the ship. And that, I am afraid, is the fate that overtook Robert Morton and his entire party. But at least your attempt was not in vain. You found Morton's boat! Yes, found it and saw it crushed like an eggshell by the thousands of tons of ice. And that, gentlemen, was to me one of the most thrilling experiences of my career. Even more so than actually flying over the pole. But if I had not encountered that storm and the polar bears, I would never have found Morton's ill-fated boat and seen it go to pieces. It actually seemed that fate was staging the last act of Morton's tragedy for me. Well, gentlemen, I know that Hale's story has given you a flavor of the Arctic. Next time I'll try to find one of you who's been in the heart of the tropics. Hey, George Granger, you're just the man. Yes, I'm just the man. We're counting on you, Frank. Mush on, mush on, mush on men's earth so cold. Mush on, mush on, mush on, hear the bones go cold. Their God is mammoth, they mush on, mush on, mush on dogs and trail-white bones. Mush on, mush on, mush on pioneers and crowns. Sour does they call these men, for gold they gamble lies but then, who the devil cares for them, these sour dogs. As they mush on, mush on for gold. Mush on, mush on, mush on men's earth so cold. Mush on, mush on, mush on, hear the bones go cold. Their God is mammoth, they mush on, mush on, mush on dogs and trail-white bones. Mush on, mush on, mush on pioneers and crowns. Sour does they call these men, for gold they gamble lies but then, who the devil cares for them, these sour dogs. As they mush on, mush on for gold. And now the World Adventurers Club bids you goodbye. But they are hoping that you will sit in on the next one of their popular meetings and hear another tale of strange adventures in strange land. The World Adventurers Club The World Adventurers Club
