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. The moment Scott saw the
Norwegian tent he knew that he had nothing to tell that was not already
known. His achievement was a mere precaution against Amundsen perishing
on his way back; and that risk was no greater than his own. The Polar
Journey was literally laid waste: that was the shock that staggered them.
Well might Bowers be glad to see the last of Norskies' tracks as their
homeward paths diverged.

All this heartsickness has passed away now; and the future explorer will
not concern himself with it. He will ask, what was the secret of
Amundsen's slick success? What is the moral of our troubles and losses? I
will take Amundsen's success first. Undoubtedly the very remarkable
qualities of the man himself had a good deal to do with it. There is a
sort of sagacity that constitutes the specific genius of the explorer;
and Amundsen proved his possession of this by his guess that there was
terra firma in the Bay of Whales as solid as on Ross Island. Then there
is the quality of big leadership which is shown by daring to take a big
chance. Amundsen took a very big one indeed when he turned from the route
to the Pole explored and ascertained by Scott and Shackleton and
determined to find a second pass over the mountains from the Barrier to
the plateau. As it happened, he succeeded, and established his route as
the best way to the Pole until a better is discovered. But he might
easily have failed and per