We went up Melbourne Harbour that evening,
very dark and blowing hard.
A telegram was waiting for Scott:
"Madeira. Am going South. AMUNDSEN."
This telegram was dramatically important, as will appear when we come to
the last act of the tragedy. Captain Roald Amundsen was one of the most
notable of living explorers, and was in the prime of life--forty-one, two
years younger than Scott. He had been in the Antarctic before Scott, with
the Belgica Expedition in 1897-99, and therefore did not consider the
South Pole in any sense our property. Since then he had realized the
dream of centuries of exploration by passing through the North-West
Passage, and actually doing so in a 60-ton schooner in 1905. The last we
had heard of him was that he had equipped Nansen's old ship, the Fram,
for further exploration in the Arctic. This was only a feint. Once at
sea, he had told his men that he was going south instead of north; and
when he reached Madeira he sent this brief telegram, which meant, "I
shall be at the South Pole before you." It also meant, though we did not
appreciate it at the time, that we were up against a very big man.
The Admiral Commanding the Australian Station came on board. The event of
the inspection was Nigger, the black ship's cat, distinguished by a white
whisker on the port side of his face, who made one adventurous voyage to
the Antarctic and came to an untimely end during the second.
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