Nothing more business-like could be imagined.
On the other hand, our expedition, running appalling risks, performing
prodigies of superhuman endurance, achieving immortal renown,
commemorated in august cathedral sermons and by public statues, yet
reaching the Pole only to find our terrible journey superfluous, and
leaving our best men dead on the ice. To ignore such a contrast would be
ridiculous: to write a book without accounting for it a waste of time.
First let me do full justice to Amundsen. I have not attempted to
disguise how we felt towards him when, after leading us to believe that
he had equipped the Fram for an Arctic journey, and sailed for the north,
he suddenly made his dash for the south. Nothing makes a more unpleasant
impression than a feint. But when Scott reached the Pole only to find
that Amundsen had been there a month before him, his distress was not
that of a schoolboy who has lost a race. I have described what it had
cost Scott and his four companions to get to the Pole, and what they had
still to suffer in returning until death stopped them. Much of that risk
and racking toil had been undertaken that men might learn what the world
is like at the spot where the sun does not decline in the heavens, where
a man loses his orbit and turns like a joint on a spit, and where his
face, however he turns, is always to the North.
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