Heroes of To-Day

by Mary Rosetta Parkman

Patient watchfulness, not only by the man in the crow’s nest, but on the part of all hands, was needed to guide the ship through the great masses of ice that pressed closer and closer about, as if they longed to seize and keep it forever in their freezing hold.

At last in January they came within sight of Mt. Terror, a volcano on Ross Island, which marked the place where they must land. It was strange and terrible, but most beautiful, to see the fire rise from that snowy mountain in the great white world they had come to explore. The ship could go no farther south because there stretched away from the shore of the island the great Ice Barrier, an enormous ice cap rising above the sea fifty or sixty feet and extending for 150,000 square miles.

Scott came, you remember, knowing well what lay before him. To reach the South Pole he must travel from his winter camp on Ross Island, 424 miles over the barrier, climb 125 miles over a monster glacier, and then push his way over 353 more miles of rough ice on a lofty, wind-swept plain. The whole journey southward and back to the winter hut covered about 1,850 miles.

As they could not count at most on more than 150 days in the year when marching would be possible, this meant that they must make over ten miles a day during the time of daylight. Scott knew how hard this must be in that land of fierce winds and sudden blizzards, when the blinding, drifting snow made all marching out of the question. But there was nothing of the dreamer about him now; he carefully worked out his plans and prepared for every emergency.

After finding a good place to land and build the hut for the winter camp where it would be sheltered from the worst winds, they spent eight days unloading the ship, which then sailed away along the edge of the barrier with a part of the men, to find out how things were to the east of them.

Captain Scott and his men had an exciting time, I can tell you, carrying their heavy boxes and packing cases across the ice to the beach. Great killer whales, twenty feet long, came booming along under them, striking the ice with their backs, making it rock dizzily and split into wide cracks, over which the men had to jump to save their lives and their precious stores.

While part of the company was building the hut and making it comfortable for the long dark winter, Captain Scott and a group of picked men began the work of going ahead and planting stores at depots along the way south. They would place fuel and boxes of food under canvas cover, well planted to secure it against the wind, and mark the spot by a high cairn, or mound, made of blocks of ice. This mound was topped with upright skis or dark packing boxes, which could be seen as black specks miles away in that white world. At intervals along the trail they would erect other cairns to mark the way over the desert of snow. Then back they went to the hut and the winter of waiting before the march.

How do you suppose they spent the long weeks of darkness? Why, they had a wonderful time! Each man was studying with all his might about the many strange things he had found in that land.

Wilson, who was Scott’s best friend, gave illustrated lectures about the water birds he had found near there, the clumsy penguins who came tottering up right in the face of his camera as if they were anxious to have their pictures taken. He had pictures, too, of their nests and their funny, floundering babies. There were also pictures of seals peeping up at him out of their breathing-holes in the ice, where he had gone fishing and had caught all sorts of curious sea creatures.

Other men were examining pieces of rock and telling the story which they told of the history of the earth ages and ages ago when the land of that Polar world was joined with the continents of Africa and South America. Evans gave lectures on surveying, and Scott told about the experiences of his earlier voyage and explained the use of his delicate instruments.