Once again they shake hands with each other, making a manly effort to hide their emotion, and then the final group turns. Two small, indeed tiny processions move on, one going south to the unknown, the other going north, homeward bound. Again and again, both groups look back to sense the last presence of living friends. Soon the last figure is out of sight. The five who have been chosen for the final stage of the journey go on into unknown territory: Scott, Bowers, Oates, Wilson and Evans.

The South Pole

The accounts written by the five become uneasier in those last days; like the blue needle of the compass, they begin to tremble close to the Pole. “It is a big strain as the shadows creep slowly round from our right through ahead to our left!” But now and then hope sparkles more and more brightly. Scott describes the distances covered more and more feelingly. “Only another ninety miles to the Pole, but it’s going to be a stiff pull both ways apparently.” That is the voice of exhaustion. And two days later: “Only 63 miles from the Pole tonight. We ought to do the trick, but oh! for a better surface!” Then, however, we suddenly hear a new, victorious note. “Only 51 miles to the Pole tonight. If we don’t get to it we shall be d—d close.” On 14th January hope becomes certainty. “We are less than 40 miles from the Pole. It is a critical time, but we ought to pull through.” On 14th January hope becomes cheerfulness in the account. You feel from Scott’s heartfelt lines how tense their sinews are, tense with hope, how all their nerves quiver with expectation and impatience. The prize is close, they are already reaching out to the last mystery on earth. One final effort, and they will have reached their goal.

16th January

“We started off in high spirits,” Scott’s diary entry begins. They set out in the morning, earlier than usual, roused from their sleeping bags by impatience to set eyes on the fearful and beautiful mystery as soon as they can. The five men, undeterred, cheerfully march twelve kilometres through the soulless, white wilderness; they cannot miss their destination now, they have almost done a great deed on behalf of mankind. But suddenly one of the companions, Bowers, becomes uneasy. His eye fixes on a small, dark point in the vast snowfield. He dares not put his suspicion into words, but by now the same terrible thought is shaking them all to the core: that signpost could be the work of human hands. They try ingenious means of reassuring themselves. Just as Robinson Crusoe tries in vain to take the strange footprint on the island for his own, they think they must be seeing a crevasse in the ice, or perhaps a reflection. With their nerves on edge they go closer, still trying to pretend to each other, although by now they all know the truth: the Norwegian Amundsen has reached the Pole before them.

Soon the last doubt is destroyed by the undeniable fact of a black flag hoisted on a sledge bearer above the traces of someone else’s abandoned campsite—marks left by the runners of sledges, and dogs’ paw prints. Amundsen has camped here. Something vast and hard for mankind to grasp has happened: in a molecule of time the South Pole of the earth, uninhabited for millennia, unseen by earthly eyes, has been discovered twice within two weeks. And they are the second discoverers—too late by a single month out of millions of months—the second men to reach the Pole, but coming first means everything to them and coming second nothing. So all their efforts were in vain, all their privations ridiculous, all the hopes of weeks, months, years were absurd. Scott wonders in his diary what it had all been for—for nothing but dreams? “All the day dreams must go; it will be a wearisome return.” Tears come to their eyes, and in spite of their exhaustion they cannot sleep that night.