Edward Scott, father of the Captain Scott who
was born at Oatlands on June 6, 1868. About the same date, or perhaps
a little earlier, it was decided that the boy should go into the
Navy like so many of his for-bears.

I have been asked to write a few pages about those early days of
Scott at Oatlands, so that the boys who read this book may have
some slight acquaintance with the boy who became Captain Scott;
and they may be relieved to learn (as it holds out some chance
for themselves) that the man who did so many heroic things does
not make his first appearance as a hero. He enters history aged
six, blue-eyed, long-haired, inexpressibly slight and in velveteen,
being held out at arm's length by a servant and dripping horribly,
like a half-drowned kitten. This is the earliest recollection of
him of a sister, who was too young to join in a children's party
on that fatal day. But Con, as he was always called, had intimated
to her that from a window she would be able to see him taking a
noble lead in the festivities in the garden, and she looked; and
that is what she saw. He had been showing his guests how superbly
he could jump the leat, and had fallen into it.

Leat is a Devonshire term for a running stream, and a branch of
the leat ran through the Oatlands garden while there was another
branch, more venturesome, at the bottom of the fields. These were
the waters first ploughed by Scott, and he invented many ways of
being in them accidentally, it being forbidden
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to enter them of intent. Thus he taught his sisters and brother
a new version of the oldest probably of all pastimes, the game of
'Touch.' You had to touch 'across the leat,' and, with a little
good fortune, one of you went in. Once you were wet, it did not
so much matter though you got wetter.

An easy way of getting to the leat at the foot of the fields was
to walk there, but by the time he was eight Scott scorned the easy
ways. He invented parents who sternly forbade all approach to this
dangerous waterway; he turned them into enemies of his country and
of himself (he was now an admiral), and led parties of gallant tars
to the stream by ways hitherto unthought of. At foot of the avenue
was an oak tree which hung over the road, and thus by dropping from
this tree you got into open country. The tree was (at this time)
of an enormous size, with sufficient room to conceal a navy, and
the navy consisted mainly of the sisters and the young brother.
All