The south pole, p.15
The South Pole, page 15
part #1 of Bipolar Series
“You say that the two Eskimos danced for a full two hours when you arrived at the Pole. Allow me to say I find that incredible. I know Eskimos well, and the behaviour you describe does not ring true from my knowledge of them.”
At this I bridled:
“Allow me to say in return, Dr Nansen, that I would hardly make up such a story which, if not true, would simply be ludicrous. Allow me also to remark that there is no such thing as a monolithic Eskimo. There are simply different tribes, some with very different culture and folkways. Of course you know well the ones you encountered but I recruited mine in a very different sector of the Arctic.”
I saw Nansen flush with anger. He was clearly used to being regarded as a prophet and an oracle – someone whose utterances were never challenged. Our conversation went rapidly downhill after that. He wrapped up the interview quickly, which I must say, caused me no regrets.
This interview took place in the early afternoon. I could not immediately discuss it with Amundsen, for we both had to attend a lecture given that evening by Ernest Shackleton, already famous for his valiant decision to turn back when just ninety-seven miles from the South Pole in order not to endanger the lives of his men. First there was a torchlit procession given by the university students, then a formal lecture attended by dignitaries in evening dress, medals and decorations. Amundsen made some introductory remarks, full of praise for Shackleton, then Shackleton gave his own entertaining account. I rather thought that the event was poorly attended, but it did bear out Amundsen’s oft-repeated remark that his countrymen were by and large blinkered and unimaginative, at root materialists, paying lip service only to their Viking past. Nansen sat in the audience, granite-like and poker-faced, looking out of place in evening dress, which fitted him awkwardly. I watched Amundsen’s reactions to the lecture. I will never forget the rapt attention in his face; he seemed almost in a trance like those famous religious mystics, except that Amundsen was not contemplating God but his own personal utopia. I also thought Amundsen’s summing-up remarks significant.
“More than anyone else,” he said, “Shackleton has managed to lift the veil that lay over Antarctica, but a little patch remains. Nowhere have hearts beat more warmly for you.”
Shackleton, indeed, seemed bowled over by the warmth of his reception. But I wondered about the secret thoughts of both Amundsen and Nansen. Since I had conquered the North Pole, perhaps Nansen would turn his attention there. And Amundsen? I decided to probe, to sound out his secret intentions. Later that evening in the hotel I broached the subject of the South Pole.
“Surely, Roald, if you accept the validity of my claim, you must logically accept that the North Pole is out of the picture. In any case, this idea of drifting in Fram is old hat after the voyages of Nansen and Sverdrup. Why not try for the South Pole instead?”
Amundsen went through the motions of looking surprised, but in this instance he was a poor actor. I could tell this was not the first time he had pondered this idea. “But I have promised Nansen,” he finally said, lamely.
“As for Nansen, let me tell you what I think of your great national hero.” I rehearsed the events of that afternoon.
“I am not surprised,” said Amundsen. “Nansen has been nourishing the golden dream of the pole for more than a decade now. And suddenly, as he would see it, a Johnny-come-lately pips him at the post. The likelihood is that he feels about you exactly as Peary does.”
He stopped and seemed to ponder something for a long time. The silence reminded me of one of those tutorials given by an unworldly academic. Suddenly he blurted out:
“Fram is not a good sea vessel for those heavy Antarctic seas. But you’re right. The South Pole is the only sensible thing to aim at. Let me think it over.”
“I would add just one thing,” I went on. “In the popular mind, the North Pole is over. Human nature being as it is, people will open their purses only for something new. To raise funding you have to think like a showman. What’s the obvious next sensation? The South Pole, of course. And you have your reputation as a polar explorer to think of. You need a coup, a sensational victory. The man in the street will never be able to understand why anyone would want to drift in the Arctic Ocean when this has already been done. Or go somewhere someone else has already been. Or go there merely for the sake of doing something in a different way.”
“I suppose I could make further modifications to Fram,” he mused.
“Look, if you could face the Arctic Ocean and the notorious Gulf of Alaska in a flimsy boat like Gjoa, you could face the Antarctic in Fram. Weight for age, as they say in horseracing parlance. It’s the same thing.”
“There is something in what you say,” he conceded. “Maybe I could raise the money for the Antarctic, and maybe I could recondition Fram. But only if I did not have Nansen on my back.”
“You mean, Nansen might take it into his head to go south?”
“Exactly. And he would be within his rights to ask for Fram back, as he gave it to me on the sole and express condition that I was going to complete his original project of drift and dash.”
By this time both of us were stroking our chins like ham actors. “I see the problem. A very tricky one. You must use supreme cunning. You would be a fool to lay your cards on the table.”
“Maybe I could get round it by going to the South Pole first, then continuing into the Pacific and up past the west coast of the USA, Canada and Alaska and through the Bering Strait for the original drift. Maybe if I advertised it as an expedition to conquer both poles on a single voyage…” His voice trailed off.
“You might need to devise such a scheme to keep Nansen dangling. But would anyone believe in its feasibility? You told me the drift and dash to the North Pole would take five years. Add in the South Pole as well, and you’re talking about a trip of at least seven years. Is anyone seriously going to grubstake that?”
“I need to sleep on this,” he concluded.
We went our separate ways. I was due to leave Olso the day after next for my voyage back to America. But, as it turned out, on our last evening together, Amundsen did not revert to the subject of the South Pole. Instead we took an extraordinarily uninhibited detour into our private lives. It all began while we were discussing the subject of Herman Gade. In his own way as remarkable as Amundsen, Gade had been Roald’s school friend in Oslo until the age of seventeen, when his wealthy father emigrated to the USA. Gade went to Harvard Law School and became a highly successful lawyer in Chicago and mayor of the nearby town of Lake Forest, Illinois. Gade senior, the patriarch, made sure that all his sons made wealthy marriages, and Frederick was no exception. He and his wife lived in some splendour at Lake Forest, where Amundsen always made long stopovers when he was in the States. Roald had introduced me to Gade, we got on well, and I too sometimes stayed there and knew their milieu and lifestyle. I suggested to Amundsen that, since Norway was so niggardly in opening its purse strings, he might approach Gade for a fundraising drive in Chicago and indeed the east coast generally, since the Gade family had such extensive connections. He replied non-committally. He was in one of his secretive moods and, perhaps irrationally irked, I added that he might even tap Carrey for a contribution. Amundsen flushed and looked stupefied.
“What do you know of Carrey?”
“Why, only that she is Lake Forrest’s most accomplished madam. I believe we shared one of her jewels. You must remember the delectable Catherine.”
“Catherine? What do you know of all this?”
“Come, Roald, Gade put you onto Carrey. Why do you think he might not have done the same for me? And I must say, I admire your taste.”
Amundsen shifted in his chair uneasily. “It is true that I used to consort with Catherine. Why not? She’s a beautiful girl. And I’m not married. And a man has appetites. But what’s your excuse? Aren’t you a married man? I know your first wife died, but you remarried. Unless that marriage too has ended?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I still enjoy returning to hearth and home and my Marie. But you surely don’t expect me to remain celibate on my travels, do you? Come now, admit that when you were on the North-West Passage you were not exactly chaste. We are men of the world. Why not a little frankness?”
“To tell you the truth, Fred, I’m somewhat ashamed of my wild excesses. Especially now.”
“What do you mean?” I probed.
“I haven’t told this to anyone else, but I’m in love. Crazy in love, as you Americans say.”
“Who’s the lucky woman?”
“Her name is Sigrid. Sigrid Castberg. I think she is the first woman I have ever really loved.”
“But that’s great news. We should celebrate.”
“Celebration would be absurdly premature. As always there is a snag. Why is there always a canker in the rose, a serpent in paradise?”
“What do you mean?”
“She is married. Her husband is an Oslo lawyer, from a well-known family. Divorce would cause a scandal. Oslo calls itself a city, but it is really a provincial little town, hamstrung and handicapped by all the Protestant neuroses of Scandinavian small-town life.”
I took a deep breath, wondering how far to push the topic. But Amundsen seemed almost to be inviting me to probe further, as if he was relieved to have someone with whom he could share the secret.
“So, may I take it that your passion has not advanced beyond the troubadour stage of admiring a beautiful woman from afar?”
“Unfortunately not. I may as well level with you. Sigrid is a wonder. Stunningly attractive, highly intelligent with an advanced wit and sense of the absurd. Amazingly, she finds me a wonder also.”
“But I take it you have both been discreet?”
“I fear not. Our trysts have to be snatched affairs, hole-in-the-corner liaisons when the husband is away. But I could wax lyrical over our encounters. Champagne at midnight in a bedroom at the Grand Hotel.”
“The Grand Hotel! You might just as well have taken out an ad in the daily newspaper. You cannot keep an affair secret if you meet in the Grand Hotel. It’s like going to the Ritz in London or the Plaza in New York! What were you thinking of?”
“Maybe at some level I wanted us to be found out. To force the issue. You see, whenever I raise the subject of divorce, Sigrid becomes cagey.”
“These are matters beyond me, Roald. I cannot advise you. But I wish you well and hope you get your heart’s desire.”
This bombshell revelation entirely distracted me from the subject I had intended to raise that evening, namely the many difficult implications of Amundsen’s secret plan to go south to the Antarctic. The result was that these formed the subject of a hurried consultation on the train down from Oslo to Kristanstad on the Skaggerak, from where my ship left for the USA. Amundsen told me that close study of the Shackleton expedition led him to two main conclusions. One is that if the British or any other nation aimed for the South Pole, much would depend on who had the better skis. With this in mind, he had ordered a new model, somewhere between the jumping ski and the cross-country variety, very long (eight feet) and very narrow. His study of the Antarctic led him to believe that this would be best for bridging wide crevasses, for dealing with thin crusts of ice and to prevent sinking into the snow. The other factor was the food supply. Shackleton had taken appalling risks, relying on scanty rations, and had narrowly escaped disaster as a result. The key was that there had to be many more depots and much larger ones, and they had to be very clearly marked, for if a party missed them in a snowstorm, again disaster would result.
“All that is very good, and no more than I would expect from someone with your amazing polar intellect,” I said. “But what about Nansen? He is your key obstacle. How are you going to square him? And how do you keep it secret from the world that you are aiming for Antarctica? Remember, as soon as the secret is out, other nations will pull out all the stops to beat you.”
“The task is difficult, certainly. Just think of the ease with which that charlatan Peary raises money. And the support the RGS in London gives their explorers. Contrast that with the parochial, penny-pinching attitudes in Norway. But I do not think I am faced with the impossible. I have often said that the true explorer must possess a repertoire of qualities, most of them never found together in any one man. I have never yet heard of an explorer famous for cunning, except possibly Stanley. Well, you will soon see one, my friend. And let us hope that you too are able to dip into this well in what I am sure will be a fearsome battle with Peary when you get home.”
That was the last conversation I ever had with Amundsen as a free man. Nobody could ever have imagined the circumstances of our next meeting.
CHAPTER SEVEN: ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
From the Amundsen-Cook correspondence
2 April 1910
Dear Fred,
I was very pleased to hear of your uneventful passage to New York on Oscar 11 and your reception there. Less pleased, of course, to hear the vicious character assassination being attempted by Peary and his acolytes. Remember, I believe in you. I also think the intervention on your side by Rasmussen is crucial. That man has stature – I knew that the moment I met him in 1905. The fact that he has interviewed thirty-five Eskimos who all back your story is circumstantial evidence way beyond anything Peary can muster. Take comfort from all this, Fred, and the truth will prevail.
There is something jinxed about America as far as we are concerned, I think. I was there again last November for a month but once more no one knew where you were to be found. I spoke in support of you but, not being able to locate and consult with you, was forced to be rather vague in my defence of you on the specifics. I did my best but I sometimes think, dear Fred, that in so consistently playing the Scarlet Pimpernel, you are your own worst enemy and give ammunition to the Pearyites.
However…I cannot adequately convey how important your visit to Scandinavia has been to me. My mind is now completely made up – it must be the South Pole. But time is of the essence, for Germany, Japan and your own country are in the race, to say nothing of my most dangerous rival, England. Captain Robert Scott, who led that rather dismal pony expedition in 1902 in the Discovery, is going to try again, and he seems to have the formidable resources of the London RGS and the British Establishment behind him. Already he is acting like a second Peary and assuming that Antarctica is his prerogative domain. Nansen told me that William Filchner, a lieutenant in the German navy, is also preparing an expedition. When Scott heard of this, he roused the British Foreign Office to protest to Berlin. Germany has no great love for the British Empire, but her plans to confront the lion are not ready yet, so they persuaded Filchner to go to London and talk to Scott. Essentially Filchner went as a postulant, and Scott virtually dictated terms which Filchner accepted: the Ross Sea was recognised as Scott’s and Filchner was to be confined to the Weddell Sea. Everything I hear about this Scott makes me dislike him. Shackleton loathes him. He told me that Scott was an over-promoted nonentity who has got as far as he has because of the patronage of that grim old man Sir Clements Markham. I have taken all effectual steps to see that he gets no assistance from Daugaard-Jensen. Incidentally, I cannot thank you enough for that introduction. The man is a marvel and even more important to me than Nansen. He takes time off from a demanding business just to help me! I am so grateful. I increased the order for dogs to one hundred. Daugaard-Jensen tells me this is the maximum number he can sell as he is under orders from the Greenland authorities not to deprive the Greenlanders themselves of dogs and to make sure that the stock of huskies there remains constant. That means that when Scott applies to him for dogs, as he surely will, he will find the cupboard empty.
Alas, my romantic life does not thrive. I told you about “Sigg”, that is Sigrid Castberg, the woman for whom I suffered coup de foudre. We started well; I thought we had a fully fledged affair going, and maybe more than that. Then she started acting strangely. I called for her one morning, only to find the husband there and, to all intents and purposes, seemingly acting like an Italian cicisbeo. Or maybe like one of those Eskimo husbands of Gjoahavn. What do you make of this? I had arranged to take Sigg to Gjovik, on the understanding that her husband, a prominent lawyer and brother of the current Minister of Justice, would be at his office. But there he was, distinguished, as tall as me – though maybe a few years younger – and affability itself.
“I hear you are going to Gjovik,” says he. “What a splendid idea. Why don’t you and Siggen travel in one sleigh and I’ll travel in the other?”
And so we set off. “What’s going on?” I said to Sigg. “Does he know about us? Is he condoning us, giving us the green light?”
“Don’t let his geniality fool you,” she said. “He’s watching our every move. Giving us enough rope to hang ourselves with.”
We drove on in semi-silence. Talk about the spectre at the feast! Eventually we descended into a valley and came to a log cabin.
“Welcome to our home from home,” said Leif (that’s Castberg’s name).
He poured drinks while Sigg prepared a scratch meal. We ate in that artificial politeness of the ménage à trois that I had never experienced outside romantic novels. As soon as we had finished, Sigg said, “We had better be starting home. It goes dark very early these days (this was about a month ago). And so we drove back. The epitome of pointlessness and nullity? I think so. Maybe it was just Leif Castberg’s recondite way of saying he knew what was going on. I heard nothing for a couple of weeks, then a smuggled note from Sigg was delivered to me.
