Evans. He suffered from indigestion, and told me at
the top of the Beardmore that he never expected to go on during the first
stage of the ascent.

Temperamentally he was a weak man, and might very easily have been an
irritable autocrat. As it was he had moods and depressions which might
last for weeks, and of these there is ample evidence in his diary. The
man with the nerves gets things done, but sometimes he has a terrible
time in doing them. He cried more easily than any man I have ever known.

What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over
and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together. It would
be stupid to say he had all the virtues: he had, for instance, little
sense of humour, and he was a bad judge of men. But you have only to read
one page of what he wrote towards the end to see something of his sense
of justice. For him justice was God. Indeed I think you must read all
those pages; and if you have read them once, you will probably read them
again. You will not need much imagination to see what manner of man he
was.

And notwithstanding the immense fits of depression which attacked him,
Scott was the strongest combination of a strong mind in a strong body
that I have ever known. And this because he was so weak! Naturally so
peevish, highly strung, irritable, depressed and moody. Practically such
a conquest of himself, such vitality, such push and determination, and
withal in himself such personal and magnetic charm. He was naturally an
idle man, he has told us so;[134] he had been a poor man, and he had a
horror of leaving those dependent upon him in difficulties. You may read
it over and over again in his last letters and messages.[135]

He will go down to history as the Englishman who conquered the South Pole
and who died as fine a death as any man has had the honour to die. His
triumphs are many--but the Pole was not by any means the greatest of
them. Surely the greatest was that by which he conquered his weaker self,
and became the strong leader whom we went to follow and came to love.

* * * * *

Scott had under him this first year in his Main Party a total of 15
officers and 9 men. These officers may be divided into three executive
officers and twelve scientific staff, but the distinction is very rough,
inasmuch as a scientist such as Wilson was every bit as executive as
anybody else, and the executive officers also did much