It’s a fine day for breaking records. For once the surface is perfect in every way. The sun is out. Helmer carries the flagpole on the leading sledge and Amundsen, who has set out in front as usual, instructs him to raise it when the sledge-meter confirms that they have knocked Shackleton off his perch.
For the best part of a day Amundsen suffers the usual monotony associated with being the frontrunner – the lonely tedium of aiming one’s skis into the empty landscape, the impossibility of trying to maintain a straight course into the nothingness with Helmer’s constant course corrections of ‘more left’ and ‘more right’ wearing thin – but then suddenly he hears:
‘Halt!’
The resounding cheer from behind brings Amundsen up sharply. To turn and see the Norwegian flag fluttering in the sunshine infuses him with intense feelings of pride. Whether they are tears of joy or of tears of sweet relief Amundsen isn’t sure – he’s just happy to hide such uncharacteristic emotion behind dark glasses.
This will be the site of their final depot. Sverre and Oscar offload 45 kilograms of weight from their sledges to ease the burden on their faltering dogs, now as skinny as goats. Hollow-sided, they eat their own excrement and gnaw the wood of the sledging cases. Bjaaland’s are in even worse shape. He’s bitter at being saddled with such wretched beasts, who struggle even on the flat. If it weren’t for them, he’d have skied to the pole already.
Feeding time is even more a fight for survival than usual. Madeiro has become a rather desperate individual. Cheeky and utterly sure of himself, he’ll seize any opportunity to snatch what is not his. Naturally a fight breaks out. A tangled knot of snarling and biting dogs skids across the snow before petering out near a tent. Yelping and retreat are followed by a licking of superficial wounds. Cowed by his mother’s savage refusal to share her supper, Madeiro decides to try his luck elsewhere. Oscar places a reassuring hand on Camilla’s head. She spins around and growls a low warning, her lips curled, teeth bared. Oscar takes a step back. This creature is no longer recognisable.
‘We must consider them enemies now,’ says Sverre.
‘And yet they carry on day after day doing exactly what we ask,’ Oscar says.
‘Not all of them.’ Sverre arches his eyebrows knowingly.
Keen to point out that he’s not to blame for the lost dog, Oscar says, ‘The chief reckons the Major went off to die in peace.’
‘Hope he got some,’ Bjaaland calls over as he looks out across the plateau. He marvels at how such vastness can feel claustrophobic. Victory could not come too soon.
The depot is marked using their trusted method of laying pieces of chopped-up sledging cases 5 kilometres to the east and west. They’ll continue making cairns every few kilometres just to be sure. Although they are all basking in the glory of having seized Shackleton’s record, celebrations have been rather circumspect. Amundsen feels their high spirits are far better employed in maintaining forward momentum. There is a fair chance that Captain Scott has also crossed this symbolic line at 88 degrees, 23 minutes. They’ll need to reach the finish line first if they want to secure a world record that cannot be broken.
‘Next stop, 90 degrees!’ is Helmer’s rallying cry as they set off the next day but there’s still distance to cover and who knows what the weather has in store for them.
The temperature hangs between minus 15 and minus 30, with a wind chill that lays waste to their faces. Amundsen, Oscar and Helmer spend the evenings examining the dreadful topography of sores and scabs with small mirrors they’ve brought along for the purpose. Helmer picks at the edges of his frostbitten nose and wonders if a beard wouldn’t offer better protection. He decides not to raise the issue; refusing to take part in Amundsen’s compulsory Saturday evening shaves might be interpreted by the increasingly tetchy chief as mutiny.
‘Count yourself lucky, Helmer,’ says Sverre archly. ‘If you were in the tropics, you’d be flyblown by now.’
They’ve been navigating by dead reckoning using compass readings and the sledge-meter. When circumstances allow they make their observations using a sextant to establish the position of the sun, chronometers to pinpoint the exact time, and their navigational tables. It is a minor triumph when both methods are in agreement. They are so close. Perhaps two or three days away. It is a time of excitement and longing. Physical and mental fatigue also. The weeks at altitude are taking a toll.
‘You’ll get your breath back when we win,’ goads Amundsen. They’d all appreciate a fresh set of lungs but the chief is speaking of morale too.
Will Scott be there? Every day each man silently studies the unbroken emptiness for signs of life. But day after day the southern horizon remains blank. Until the evening of 13 December.
They’ve released the dogs, unloaded their provisions and are struggling against the wind to pitch the tent when Sverre says suddenly, ‘Anyone else see those black shapes?’
The shapes are unmoving and probably some distance off, although it’s hard to tell with windblown snow causing such problems with depth of perception. Amundsen sees. The British camp? His heart skips a beat. ‘Bjaaland!’ he calls, his anxiety borne aloft on the spindrift whipped up by the southerly. ‘Take a look please.’
Bjaaland straps his skis back on and sets off with the kind of explosive energy only a champion skier could muster so late in the day. However, a mere 20 metres into his mad dash, he stops. Eyes remain glued to him. Not a word is spoken – is this the fearful moment of discovery? The moment when their dreams turn to dust? With his signature loping gait, Bjaaland returns to camp. ‘Optical illusion,’ he says. ‘They’re dog turds.’
There are barely 15 kilometres to go. The surface is so flat that they could, in all likelihood, see if a Union Jack was flapping in the distance, asserting its dominance over the South Pole. To point this out seems rather like tempting fate. They’ve all fallen back on little superstitions.
The tent is silent but for the sibilant whisper of the Primus and the slurping sounds of men enjoying their supper. Food is certainly a comfort for their jangled nerves. After dinner Amundsen lies in his sleeping bag and considers all the things that might have gone wrong for them during the journey from their starting point at the foot of his garden on the Bunde Fjord. There are not many things he would change, if any. He considers his career, the steady progression since he was that fifteen-year-old boy reading of Sir John Franklin’s adventures. Whatever he has achieved has been the result of lifelong planning, painstaking preparation and the hardest kind of conscientious work. Teetering on the brink of success, Amundsen enters a strange mental state. Fear and doubt have been constant companions; dread and ambition powerful motivating forces that have driven him on with single-minded focus. To dismiss them outright, to replace them with joy and satisfaction does not feel quite right. Yes, he feels the relief of having almost achieved his aim, and a pleasurable sense of vindication at having planned his assault to perfection, but any delight in victory tomorrow must be tainted with an ill-defined melancholy, like a cloud passing over the sun on a summer’s day. The race is virtually over. He records the day’s weather and their position in his diary but cannot face writing any solemn words on this eve of making history. Tonight he will keep his own counsel.