Amundsen

In Florence, Italy, in a chamber of the Villa Palmieri, where Boccaccio is supposed to have spun out his ingenious Decameron, an old gentleman lay very sick abed. Seventy-five years were on his back. On his chest there was bronchial pneumonia. On his heart, heavier than years or sickness, there was black despair.

Leagues and leagues from Florence, far into the icy fastnesses of the North Pole, the old gentleman's son, Lincoln Ellsworth, had flown with Explorer Roald Amundsen of Norway a fortnight before (TIME, June 1). The father had made their flight possible with a purse of $100,000 after twice discountenancing the adventure and urging his son to rest with him in the mellow ease and quiet of old-world culture with which he had surrounded himself. Now, dying, he pondered his surrender, weighed the dangers over and over, longed for news--but passed without hearing any.

Search. In Danes Gut, Spitzbergen, Amundsen's base ships, From and Hobby, awaited the zero hour fixed by their instructions. The hour struck and no seaplane zoomed in from the north, nor was any signal from the smoke bombs Amundsen had taken with him visible on the horizon. Glad of a chance for action, the waiting ones had up their anchors, steamed for the edge of the ice-floes, the Hobby heading northeast, the From northwest.

Meantime, a ship from Norway approached Spitzbergen bearing two seaplanes and their pilots, with instructions to scout the ice floes but not to attempt the hazardous penetration towards the Pole.

In France, Ida Rubenstein "the superb," lion huntress, onetime fiancee of Poet D'Annunzio of Italy, organized a charity fete to finance a search for Amundsen and Ellsworth in the Pourquoi Pas, ice-worthy ship of Explorer Jean Charcot.

In the U. S., Captain Zackery Lansdowne, commander of the Shenandoah, submitted plans to his chief, Secretary Wilbur of the Navy, showing how the big dirigible could fly to the Pole via the mooring-mast at Pulham, England, and her own mast-ship Patoka, which could be sent ahead to Spitzbergen. No intimation came from Washington that this was intended, or would be received, as anything more than a plan.