[CHAPTER VIII—North Pole and South]
Dinner was a jolly affair. Everybody was in excellent humor. Hal had quite recovered from his afternoon’s experience; Pat had succeeded in getting the Marianne into perfect shape; Bill looked forward to his evening’s plans with relish; and Bob was happy just on general principles, anticipating a great evening, and because he was usually happy. Mrs. Gregg, who often became lonely by herself, was glad of being in such pleasant company.
They went into the garden after dinner, and the Captain, after filling up his ever-present pipe, began his story.
“Well,” he said, “there’s only one way to begin the story of anybody’s life. That’s by telling when he was born, because after all, that’s the first thing that happens to a man, isn’t it? Well, Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd was born on October 25, 1888, in Winchester, Virginia, where there had been Byrds ever since anybody could remember. In fact, the first Byrd settled in America about 1690, and the name has been a prominent and honored one ever since. There were Byrds fighting in the Revolution and in the Civil War, so it wasn’t from nowhere that our Richard Evelyn got his courage and grit that carried him through the dangers of being the first man to cross both the North and the South poles in a plane.
“He had a grandmother, too, who gave him a goodly supply of what it takes to do great deeds. That was Jane Byrd, who was the sort of person around whom legends spring up, and are carried down from generation to generation. In fact, one of them was a famous story of her killing of a huge blacksnake. It was during the Civil War. Her husband and her brother were both fighting for the Confederacy, and Jane Byrd was left alone to manage the great plantation and farm. And manage it she did. One day she went to gather the eggs in the chicken house, and found a great blacksnake had swallowed twelve prized guinea eggs that had been set under a setting hen. She clubbed the snake to death with a club, taking care not to strike the twelve bumps that showed all down its body the places where the twelve guinea eggs reposed. Then she cut the snake open and took out the eggs and put them back under the hen, without a bit of fuss or excitement. She took seriously the charge that she must take care of the estate while her men were away fighting.
“Richard Byrd couldn’t have had better ancestors to back him up in his adventures, but every ounce of courage, every bit of perseverance that he inherited, he needed. He was a man who met with hundreds of disappointments, and innumerable obstacles in carrying out the plans that meant so much to him and to the world. But he was never downed by them. Set-backs that would have made other men, men of lesser caliber turn from their paths and give up their plans, were just so much more of a spur to him.
“Dick Byrd was never a robust man. He had the physical handicap of a bad ankle to overcome, and his general build has always been slight. He is not the huge, strapping hero of story-book fame; he was the little Napoleon with a great determination that outweighed any physical weakness. A man doesn’t have to be big to get places. A little fellow, if he wants to badly enough, can accomplish a lot.
“And Dick Byrd certainly wanted badly to go to the Pole. Even when he was a kid in school, it was his ambition to be the first man to reach the North Pole. Somebody beat him to it. Peary got there first, but it took him a long time, and he had to go on foot. Byrd flew, and accomplished in a few hours what had taken days and weeks to do before.
“Not only did he want to go to the Pole—he wanted to go to all sorts of places, and he did, too. Before he was fourteen years old, Richard Byrd traveled alone around the world! That took nerve. And not only nerve on Richard Byrd’s part, but on the part of his mother! The trip wasn’t a regular round-the-world tour that anybody can make today on a boat that’s like a little palace, but it was a rough, adventurous voyage on an army transport, and a British tramp.