WE know of many heroes—heroes of long ago, whose shining deeds make the past bright; and heroes of to-day, whose courage in the face of danger and hardship and whose faithful service for others make the times in which we live truly the best times of all. But should you ask me who of all this mighty company of the brave was the bravest, I should answer, Captain Scott. Some one has called his story, “The Undying Story of Captain Scott.” Would you like to hear it, and know for yourself why it is that as long as true men live this is a story that cannot die?

Most people who work know what they are working for; most men who are fighting for a cause know where they give their strength and their lives. The explorer alone has to go forward in the dark. He does not know what he will find. Only he hears within his heart the still whisper: “Something hidden. Go and find it.” And he believes that there is no far place of the earth that does not hold some truth, something that will help us learn the secrets of life and explain much that puzzles us in the world to-day.

When the explorer has once begun to think and wonder about the great unseen, unknown countries, where man has never journeyed, the whisper comes again and again: “Something hidden. Go and find it.”

People sometimes say to the explorer, “There is no sense of going to those strange lands where you cannot live. No good nor gold ever yet came from No-Man’s Land.”

But the men who went into the jungles of darkest Africa said, “As long as there is something hidden we must go to find it.” And the men who went into the still, white, frozen lands of the North said: “There is no truth that can stay untouched. When we know the secrets of the North and the South, we shall the better understand the East and the West.”

The whisper, “Something hidden,” came to Robert Falcon Scott when he was a little boy in Devonshire, England. Con, as he was called, never tired of hearing the tales of Sir Walter Raleigh, and of Sir Francis Drake, who sailed the seas and found a new world for England and sent his drum back to Devon where it was hung on the old sea-wall to show that the great days of the past would surely live again.

The Devonshire men were sure that the brave spirit of Drake would come back in some true English heart whenever the time of need came. They even whispered when they told how Nelson won his great victory at Trafalgar,

“It was the spirit of Sir Francis Drake.”

When Con heard these tales, and the stories of his own father and uncles who were captains in England’s navy, he knew it was true that the spirit of a brave man does not die.

Sometimes when he was thinking of these things and wondering about the “something hidden” that the future had in store for him, his father would have to call him three or four times before he could wake him from his dream. “Old Mooney,” his father called him then, and he shook his head.

“Remember, son,” he would say, “an hour of doing is better than a life of dreaming. You must wake up and stir about in this world, and prove that you have it in you to be a man.”

How do you think that the delicate boy, with the narrow chest and the dreamy blue eyes, whom his father called “Old Mooney,” grew into the wide-awake, practical lad who became, a few years later, captain of the naval cadets on the training ship Britannia?

“I must learn to command this idle, dreamy ‘Old Mooney’ before I can ever command a ship,” he said to himself. So he gave himself orders in earnest.

When he wanted to lie in bed an extra half hour, it was, “Up, sir! ‘Up and doing,’ is the word!” And out he would jump with a laugh and a cheer for the new day.

When he felt like hugging the fire with a book on his knees he would say, “Out, sir! Get out in the open air and show what you’re made of!” Then he would race for an hour or two with his dog, a big Dane, over the downs, to come back in a glow ready for anything. And so the man who was to command others became master of himself. There came a time when a strong, brave man was needed to take command of the ship Discovery, that was to sail over unexplored seas to the South Pole. And Robert Falcon Scott, then a lieutenant in the royal navy, who had long dreamed of going forth where ships and men had never been and find the “something hidden” in strange far-off lands, found his dream had come true. He was put in command of that ship.

Three years were spent in that terrible land where

in the fierce winds that swept over those great death-white wastes.

After this time of hardship and plucky endurance it was hard to have to return without having reached the South Pole. But he came back with so much of deepest interest and value to report about the unknown country, that those who had given their money to provide for the expedition said: “The voyage has really been a success. Captain Scott must go again under better conditions with the best help and equipment possible.”

It was some time, however, before Captain Scott could be spared to go on that second and last voyage to the South Pole. This man who knew all about commanding ships and men was needed to help with the great battleships of the navy. Five years had passed before plans were ready for the greatest voyage of all.

When it was known that Captain Scott was to set out on another expedition, eight thousand men volunteered to go as members of the party. It was splendid to think how much real interest there was in the work and to know how much true bravery and fine spirit of adventure there is in the men of our every-day world, but it was hard to choose wisely out of so many the sixty men to make up the party.

They needed, of course, officers of the navy, besides Captain Scott, to help plan and direct, a crew of able seamen, firemen, and stokers to

run the ship, and doctors and stewards to take care of the men. Besides these, they wanted men of science who would be able to investigate in the right way the plants, animals, rocks, ice, ocean currents, and winds of that strange part of the earth; and an artist able to draw and to take the best kind of photographs and moving pictures.

The ship chosen for this voyage was the Terra Nova, the largest and strongest whaler that could be found. Whalers are ships used in whale-fishing, which are built expressly to make their way through the floating ice of Arctic seas.

The Terra Nova was a stout steamer carrying full sail, so that the winds might help in sending her on her way, thus saving coal whenever possible. The great difficulty was, of course, the carrying of sufficient supplies for a long time and for many needs.

With great care each smallest detail was worked out. There were three motor sledges, nineteen ponies, and thirty-three dogs to transport supplies. There was material for putting up huts and tents. There were sacks of coal, great cans of oil and petrol (gasoline); and tons of boxes of provisions, such as pemmican, biscuit, butter, sugar, chocolate—things that would not spoil and which would best keep men strong and warm while working hard in a cold country. There were fur coats, fur sleeping bags, snow shoes, tools of all sorts, precious instruments, books, and many other things, each of which was carefully considered for they were going where no further supplies of any sort were to be had.

On June 15, 1910, the Terra Nova sailed from Wales, and on November 26 left New Zealand for the great adventure.

If the men had been superstitious they would have been sure that a troublous time was ahead, for almost immediately a terrible storm broke. Great waves swept over the decks, the men had to work with buckets and pumps to bale out the engine room, while boxes and cases went bumping about on the tossing ship, endangering the lives of men and animals, and adding to the noise and terror of the blinding, roaring tempest.

But through it all the men never lost their spirits. Scott led in the singing of chanties, as they worked hour after hour to save the ship and its precious cargo.

At last they came out on a calm sea where the sun shone on blue waves dotted here and there with giant ice-bergs, like great floating palaces, agleam with magic light and color, beautiful outposts of the icy world they were about to enter.

You know that the seasons in the South Arctic regions are exactly opposite to ours. Christmas comes in the middle of their summer—the time of the long day when the sun never drops below the horizon. Their winter, when they get no sunlight for months, comes during the time we are having spring and summer.

It was Scott’s plan to sail as far as the ship could go during the time of light, build a comfortable hut for winter quarters, then go ahead with sledges and carry loads of provisions, leaving them in depots along the path of their journey south, which was to begin with the coming of the next long day.

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.

Of course they took short exploring trips about, and sometimes when the moon was up, or, perhaps, in the scant twilight of midday, they played a game of football in the snow.

At last the sun returned, and the time came for the great journey about the first of November, just a year after they had left New Zealand.

They had not gone far when it was proved that the motor sledges were useless, as the engines were not fitted for working in such intense cold. So, sorrowfully they had to leave them behind, and make ponies and dogs do all the work of hauling.

Then began a time of storms when blizzard followed blizzard. It seemed that they had met the wild spirit of all tempests in his snowy fastness, and as if he were striving to prove that the will of the strongest man must give way before the savage force of wind and weather. But there was something in the soul of these men that could not be conquered by any hardship—something that would never give up.

“The soul of a true man is stronger than anything that can happen to him,” said Captain Scott.

It seemed as if this journey was made to prove that. And it did prove it.

Misfortune followed misfortune. The sturdy ponies could not stand the dangers. Some of them slipped and fell into deep chasms in the ice; others suffered so that the only kind thing was to put them out of their pain. The men went along then up the fearful climb across the glacier, with just the help of the dogs who pulled the sledges carrying provisions. One of the men became very ill, which delayed them further. And ever the dreadful wind raged about them.

They reached a point about 170 miles from the Pole on New Year’s day. Here Scott decided to send two members of his party back with the sick man and the dog sledge. They were, of course, disappointed, but realized it was for the best.

After leaving part of their provisions in a new depot to feed them on the way back, Captain Scott and four men, Wilson, Oates, Bowers, and Evans, went on the last march to the Pole with lighter loads which they dragged on a hand sledge. This is what Scott wrote in the letter sent back by his men:

“A last note from a hopeful position. I think it’s going to be all right. We have a fine party going forward and all arrangements are going well.”

How did the way seem to the men who still went on and on, now in the awful glare of the sun on the glistening ice, now in the teeth of a terrific gale? Here are some lines written by Wilson which may tell you something of what they felt:

But still they pushed on and on, carrying supplies and their precious instruments, together with the records of their observations and experiences, until at last the goal was reached.

The South Pole at last! But here after all they had dared and endured another great trial awaited them just at the moment of seeming success. There at the goal toward which they had struggled with such high hopes was a tent and a mound over which floated the flag of Norway. The Norse explorer, Amundsen, had reached the Pole first. A letter was left telling of his work of discovery. He had happened on a route shielded from the terrific winds against which Scott had fought his way mile by mile, and had arrived at the Pole a month earlier.

Now, indeed, Scott showed that “the soul of a brave man is stronger than anything that can happen to him.” Cheerfully he built a cairn near the spot to hold up their Union Jack, which flapped sadly in the freezing air as if to reproach them with not having set it as the first flag at the Farthest South of the earth. Then before they started back with the news of Amundsen’s success, Scott wrote these lines in his diary:

“Well, we have turned our back now on the goal of our ambition and must face 800 miles of solid dragging—and good-by to most of the day dreams.”

But it was for Scott to show the world that defeat might be turned into the greatest victory of all. When you hear any one say that a man is too weak or fearful to bear hardship and ill-success to the end, think of Captain Scott and say, “The brave soul is stronger than anything that can happen.”

On he struggled, on and on, though delayed again and again by blizzards that raged about in the most terrible fury as if determined to make this little party give up the fight. At last they came, weak and nearly frozen (for the supplies of food and fuel had run short), almost within sight of a provision camp where comfort and plenty awaited them. At this moment came the most terrible storm of all, that lasted for more than a week.

One morning Lieutenant Oates, who was ill and feared that his friends might lose their last chance of reaching safety by staying to care for him, walked out into the blizzard with these words:

“I am just going outside and may be some time.”

Scott wrote that they “realized he was walking to his death and tried to dissuade him, but knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman. We all hope to meet the end with a similar spirit,” he added.

A little later Scott wrote in his diary:

“Every day we have been ready to start for our depot eleven miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.”

Eight months after when a rescue party succeeded in reaching the tent, they found the bodies of Wilson and Bowers lying with their sleeping bags closed over their heads. Near them was Captain Scott, with the flaps of his sleeping bag thrown back. Under his shoulder were his note-books and letters to those at home, which he had written up to the very last when the pencil slipped from his fingers. His thought in dying was not for himself but for those that would be left to grieve.

On the spot where they died, their friends left the bodies of these brave men covered with the canvas of their tent, and over them they piled up a great cairn of ice in which was placed a wooden cross made of snow-shoes. On the cross were carved these words of a great poet, which no one better than Captain Scott had made living words:

“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Now we can see why this tale of Captain Scott is truly an undying story. As long as true hearts beat those words will find an echo, and also those other words which he so nobly proved by his life and death:

“The soul of a brave man is stronger than anything that can happen to him.”