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From Circle City to Fairbanks was no hop at all next day. Concerned for "Sandy" Smith and his dogs, Wilkins did not rest long when he got there, but loaded the Alaskan with dogmeat and gasoline and prepared to fly back over the towering Brooks range (6,000 feet and more). A wireless from the Colville River announced Smith's return to camp with reindeer meat. Wilkins shipped the relief food, piled on more gasoline and flew at once with Eielson — carrying 3,800 lb. of fuel to start supplying the Barrow base for their major polar flights. The same afternoon he flashed a report of their safe landing.
Amundsen. The Pope blessed them and so did the elements. Premier Mussolini bade them adieu. They stood in their linen overalls at the cabin windows and their chief ordered that the nose ropes be cast off. The blunt silvery cigar tilted heavenward to an angle of 45 degrees. Then propellers roared, stern ropes were flung off, every one waved and up they shot toward Italy's bright blue sky — Colonel Umberto Nobile, Lieutenant Riiser-Larsen, Major Scott (their English pilot), Lieutenant Mercier (their French pilot), Norsemen and Italians and one young female, Titina their mascot terrier — the personnel of the good airship Norge as she soared above the Ciampino Airdrome to begin the first leg of her Rome-to-Nome transpolar flight.
Emperors used to march the Appian Way in triumph. The Norge soared majestically above it up to the Eternal City and set off to fly, in 24 hours, a distance that used to take Caesar's legions two months of forced marches. She headed out over the Mediterranean for Corsica's upper tip. Colonel Nobile christened her radio with a message to Premier Mussolini — steaming to visit Italian possessions in Africa aboard the battleship Cavour — that all was well.
High over the sparkling sea, the Norge was a long silver bullet as she moved by Marseilles. They saw her pass Toulon at 5:30 in the evening, droning strongly northwestward.
Among those aboard the Norge was a stalwart named Amundsen. Despatches did not give his first name, simply calling him "young Amundsen." Had he by chance been named Roald, confusion might have arisen, for "the" Roald Amundsen — "Old Amundsen"* as the despatches may yet have it — was at Oslo, Norway, being dined and wined by his countrymen, in company with his fellow explorer, the American Lincoln Ellsworth. They will join Colonel Nobile on the Norge at Spitzbergen and form a joint command.
Byrd. Tom, Dick and Harry shook hands in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Tom and Harry went back to their respective jobs (Harry is Governor of Virginia), and their brother Dick went ahead with his — getting men and freight shaken down, stowed and shipshape aboard the S.S. Chantier as she steamed from the pier. The freight was particularly troublesome, and the ship paused overnight off Staten Island before heading across the ocean for Tromso, Norway, where Dick — Commander Richard E. Byrd — will lay in whatever supplies or equipment he still needs for his flights next month in the Fokker monoplane Josephine Ford poleward from Spitzbergen.
*Aged 53, "the" Amundsen is unmarried. But the patronymic is no common one in Norway. Possibly "young" and "old" are related.