Sad and hopeless, they set out like men condemned to death on the last march to the Pole that they had expected to conquer with jubilation. No one tries to console the others; they drag themselves on without a word. On 18th January Captain Scott reaches the Pole with his four companions. Now that the idea of having been the first no longer dazzles him, all he sees, dull-eyed, is the bleakness of the landscape. There is nothing there to be seen, Scott concludes, “very little that is different from the awful monotony of the past days. Great God! this is an awful place!” The only strange thing that they discover is created not by nature but by his rival’s human hand: Amundsen’s tent with the Norwegian flag fluttering boldly and triumphantly from the rampart that humanity has now stormed. A letter from the conqueror of the Pole waits for the unknown second comer who would tread here after him, asking him to forward it to King Haakon of Norway. Scott takes it upon himself to perform this hardest duty of all, acting as a witness to the world that someone else has done the deed that he longed to be his own.

They sadly put up the British flag, “our poor slighted Union Jack”, beside Amundsen’s sign of his victory. Then they leave “the goal of our ambition”, Scott writes, with prophetic misgivings, “Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it.”

The Collapse

The dangers are ten times worse on the return journey. The compass guided them on the way to the Pole. Now they must also take care not to lose their own trail on the way back, not to lose it once for weeks on end, in case they miss finding the depots where they have stored their food, clothing and the warmth that a few gallons of petroleum mean. So they are uneasy about every step they take when driving snow impedes their vision, for every deviation from the trail will lead to certain death. And their bodies lack the freshness of the first march, when they were still heated by the chemical energies of plentiful food and the warmth of their Antarctic home.

Moreover, the steel spring of their will is slack now. On the outward journey the unearthly hope of representing the curiosity and longing of all mankind kept their energies heroically together, and they acquired superhuman strength through the consciousness of doing something immortal. Now they are fighting for nothing but to save their skins, their physical, mortal existence, for a less than glorious homecoming that perhaps they fear more than they desire.

The notes from those days make terrible reading. The weather gets worse and worse, winter has set in earlier than usual, and the soft snow forms a thick crust under their boots at an angle to the foot so that they stumble, and the frost wears down their weary bodies. There is always a little jubilation when they reach another depot after days of wandering and hesitation, and then a fleeting flame of confidence comes back into what they say. Nothing bears witness more finely to the intellectual heroism of these few men than the way that Wilson, the scientist, goes on making his observations even here, a hair’s breadth from death, and adds sixteen kilograms of rare varieties of rock to all the necessary load on his own sledge.

But gradually human courage gives way to the superior power of nature, which here implacably, with the strength hardened by millennia, brings all the powers of cold, frost, snow and wind to bear against the five brave men. Their feet are badly injured now, and their bodies, inadequately warmed by one hot meal a day and weakened by scanty rations, are beginning to fail them. One day the companions are horrified to find that Evans, the strongest of them, is suddenly behaving strangely. He lags behind, keeps complaining of real and imaginary troubles; they are alarmed to conclude from his odd talk that the poor man has lost his mind as the result of a fall or of terrible pain. What are they to do with him? Leave him in this icy wilderness? But on the other hand they must reach the depot without delay, or else—Scott himself hesitates to write what would happen. The unfortunate Evans dies at 12.30 a.m. on 17th February, not a day’s march from Shambles Camp where, for the first time, the slaughter of their ponies a month before provides them with a better meal.

The four men march on, but there is a disaster. The next depot brings more bitter disappointment. There is not enough oil there, and that means that they must be sparing with fuel, when warmth is the only real weapon against the cold. In the icy cold and stormy night, waking with a sense of discouragement, they hardly have the strength left to pull felt shoes on over their feet. But they drag themselves on, one of them, Oates, with frostbitten toes. The wind is blowing more sharply than ever, and at the next depot, on 2nd March, there is the cruel disappointment of again finding too little fuel to burn.

Now fear shows through the words they leave.