Byrd and Igloo: A Polar Adventure: Chapters 1–2

The fierce wind was unrelenting, saturated with a bitter icy rain.

Startled, Maris peered down through her glasses and saw a shivering puppy with bedraggled white fur, brown ears, and two little brown patches on his back.

She had a dilemma.
Maris couldn’t keep the puppy, but she also knew if she left him, he would die from the cold.

She was a globe-trotting world traveler who hobnobbed with political leaders and diplomats.

And if the trucks couldn’t travel over roads to the more remote villages, she would have the equipment loaded on camels, llamas, or dogsleds—whatever it took to get the job done.

But before she had a chance to explain his plight to her fellow passengers, the bus came to a halt. It was her stop. She held the puppy protectively in her arms, walked by the scowling bus driver, and exited the bus.

Dog biscuits were promptly purchased at the store, and when the puppy was given some, he ate with so much gusto he tried to eat the cardboard box, too.

At thirty-seven years old, the handsome and intrepid aviator was making headlines with his plan to be the first person ever to fly over the North Pole—a daring feat that many considered crazy.

At thirty-seven years old, the handsome and intrepid aviator was making headlines with his plan to be the first person ever to fly over the North Pole—a daring feat that many considered crazy.

“I knew the compass was necessary...but I did not know that time was part of the calculation for determining position. Navigation became at once a mysterious and important function.”

Although Byrd was not a stellar student in school, there were two subjects he excelled in—mathematics and navigation.

“The crash when I struck echoed from the steel girders far above me, and there was a loud noise of something snapping,” said Byrd.

“Certain kinds of deck duty left me aching all over from the pain that began in the old mangled ankle,” said Byrd.

But the final blow came when Byrd fell down an open gangway and broke his foot for a third time.

Byrd was sent to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida to learn how to fly, which he did with his usual all-out gusto.

When Byrd earned his wings, making him a full-fledged navy pilot, his goal was to be a pioneer in the budding field of aviation and to make himself invaluable to the field.

He developed the “bubble sextant,” an air navigation instrument that indicates the pilot’s position. Instead of having to look for land, the navigator looks through the sextant and locates his position based on the altitudes of the sun or stars.

Byrd also invented the “drift indicator,” an instrument that told a navigator how far off course the winds had blown his airplane.

“Don’t you like dogs?” Maris asked.
“Certainly I like them,” Byrd said with a slight southern drawl.

Maris was dogged in her determination. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Below the rusty and tar-covered decks of the steamship SS Chantier, in the galley where all of the meals were cooked, the puppy whined.

He pulled the chain with all his might, trying to break free from it, but it was no use. He couldn’t escape.
After a few more attempts, the puppy realized it was futile, and he changed tactics.

Once he heard them, he planned on barking like a rabid, mad dog.

Hailed as the “King of All Living Explorers,” Amundsen was the first person to set foot in places where other men died trying.

He was the first to find the elusive Northwest Passage and the first in the race to reach the South Pole.

Using the only tools on hand—axes, picks, knives, and an ice anchor—it took them a month to cut one of the planes out of the ice and build an ice bridge across a chasm.

By hacking, sawing, and stomping down on the ice over and over again, they were able to build an airstrip of smooth ice.

This time Amundsen wasn’t going to try to fly an airplane over the North Pole. Instead, he was going to fly a dirigible. A dirigible, or blimp, is a lightweight aircraft that can travel long distances without having to land and refuel.

Once during a flight on the Greenland expedition, Byrd noticed the oil gauge quickly rising, indicating the oil tank was ready to explode.

The food supplies alone contained four hundred pounds of emergency rations of pemmican (a mixture of lean, dried meat, cereal, suet, lard, currants, raisins, and spices that is heated over a stove with water turning it into a mush), 4,500 pounds of whole carcasses of beef, and another eight tons of other food, including eggs, sausage, bacon, oatmeal, dried milk, butter, sugar, cream cheese, and pea soup.

There were enough provisions to feed the fifty men who had eagerly volunteered to be the crew aboard the ship for three months.

The men grabbed some axes and began chopping away the bulkhead that was in the way.

While Byrd and his crew got the ship in shape, Igloo wallowed in his misery down in the galley.

There was one particularly bright spot, the gregarious carrot-topped cook with the wire-rimmed glasses, George “Cook” Tennant.

When Igloo looked up, he saw a stout, dark-haired man looking down at him.

With his legs flailing, he plunged headfirst toward the mouth of the ocean, only to be caught by the railing of the ship. On these hair-raising occasions, when Igloo cheated death, he would forgo the bark and slink back to his starting point.

Byrd and his queasy, seasick crew spent days breaking their backs moving the coal from the after hold to the midship coal bunkers. But it didn’t dampen their enthusiasm.

Soon after, Igloo refused to eat in the galley, no matter how hungry he was—unless Cook Tennant pressed him. Then he might have a nibble, but no more. Instead, he gallantly followed Byrd into the dining room and took his place by Byrd’s chair.

After everyone had helped themselves, Byrd would fix a plate for Igloo and serve it to him. Igloo ate with relish.

Along with the six-pound first-aid kit, which contained splints and bandages, the Yale-educated Dr. Daniel O’Brien, who was the expedition’s medical officer, also gave Byrd and Bennett instructions on how to perform surgery in case one of them was severely injured in a crash.