- O X F O R D B O O K W O R M S LIBRARY True Stories The Coldest Place on Earth Stage 1 (400 headwords) Series Editor: Jennifer Bassett Founder Editor: Tricia Hedge Activities Editors: Jennifer Bassett and Alison Raxter OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS C;rc.it Clarcndon Srrcct, Oxford O X 2 6DP Oxh)ril Un~vcr\~tv Preaa IS 2 departmelit of the Un~vcrs~ty of Oxf<,rd It forthcrs the Un~vcr\it!'s ohlcctivc of cxccllcnce In rcsrnrch, \chalar\h~p. ,111d cducat~on hv puhliahlng worldw~de In Oxford Neu York .Iurkl.ind Ba~igkok Burnos Arcs C.ipc Town Clicnnai D.ir cs S.il.iam Dclh~ Hong Kong lst.~nhul K a r a ~ l i ~ K~lkdt'i Kuala Lumpur M n d r ~ d Melbourne Mcx1c11 C:~ty Mumha1 N.uroh~ Ss0 Paulo Sli.ingha~ Taipei Tokyn Toronto Oxford and Oxford English .ire rrg~stcred trade m.irks of Oxford llti~vera~ty P r r s In the l l K and In crrtaln [rthcr c ( ~ u n t r ~ c \ ISBN O 19 4229 39 4 C Oxford Unt\er\lty Prc\\ 2000 E~ghth imprcs\~on 2001 F~rst p ~ ~ h l ~ a h c d In Oxford Bookwc)rrns 1992 T l i ~ s \cc(lnd e d ~ t ~ o ~ i puhl~alicd In the Oxford Bookworms Llhr,iry 2000 il complete recorrhng of tht\ Bookworm\ rdltlon of Thr Coldest PLzcr "71 t.,lrth IS :~vailahlc on casrette ISRN 0 19 422904 1 N o unauthorized photocopying All r ~ g h t ~ reaervcd. 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Prc\\. .it rlir .iildrc\\ .~hovc Thc puhl~shcrs mould l ~ k c to thank the following for t h c ~ r pernii\\lon to ~rcproducc pIi~ltogr.~phs: Nor\k Pol.~r~nsr~rurr: p ~ g c \ 15, 17, Li, 32 Poppcrf<~ro: page\ 3, 7, 10, 14, 18, 23, 29, 10, 11, 3.i. 36, 38 The Roy.11 Geogmplitc.~l Society: pdgcs 2, 11. 12, 19, LO, 34 CONTENTS S T O R Y I N T R O D I I C T I O N 1 Two Ships 2 The Race 3 The Ponies 4 Food Depots 5 A Long Cold Winter 6 A Bad Start 7 Motor Sledges and Mountains 8 Across the Plateau 9 The End of the Race GLOSSARY ACTIVITIES: Before Reading ACTIVITIES: While Reading ACTIVITIES: After Reading A B O U T THE A U T H O R A B O U T B O O K W O R M S Chapter 1 Two Ships T he race began in the summer of 1910. On June 1st' in London, a black ship, the Terra Nova, went down the river Thames to the sea. Thousands of people stood by the river to watch it. They were all excited and happy. On the Terra Nova, Captain Robert Falcon Scott smiled quietly. It was a very important day for him. He was a strong man, not very tall, in the blue clothes of a captain. He was forty-one years old, but he had a young face, like a boy. His eyes were dark and quiet. One man on the ship, Titus Oates, smiled at Scott. 'What an exciting day, Captain!' he said. 'Look at those people! I feel like an important man!' Scott laughed. 'You are important, Titus,' he said. 'And you're going to be famous, too. We all are. Do you see this flag?' He looked at the big British flag at the back of the ship, and smiled at Oates. 'That flag is coming with us,' he said. 'In the Antarctic, I'm going to carry it under my clothes. We're going to be the first men at the South Pole, and that flag is going to be first, too!' Five days later, on June 6th, a man opened the door of his wooden house in Norway. He was a tall man, with a long face. 2 The Coldest Place on Earth Two Ships 3 The man smiled, and walked quiclly away from the house, down to the sea. In the water, a big wooden ship waited for him. The man got onto the ship, and talked and laughed quietly with his friends. The ship's name was Fram, and the man was Roald Amundsen. The Fram was the most beautiful ship on earth, Captain Robert Falcon Scott He waited outside the house for a minute. Everything was very quiet. He could see no houses, only mountains, trees, and water. It was nearly dark. The sky was black over the mountains. 4 The Coldest Place on Earth The Race 5 Amundsen thought. His friends were the best skiers on earth, too. One of them, Olav Bjaaland, smiled at him. 'North Pole, here we come, Captain,' he said. 'Yes.' Amundsen said. His friends could not see his face in the dark. 'Fram is going to the Arctic.' Everyone on the Fram was ready to go to the North Pole, to the Arctic. Amundsen wanted to go there, too. But first he wanted to go south. His friends didn't know that. At midnight on June 6th, the Fram moved quietly away from Amundsen's house, out to sea. Chapter 2 The Race T he Fram went to an island in the south of Norway. It was a very little island, with only one small wooden house, two trees - and nearly a hundred dogs. 'Look at that!' Bjaaland said. 'It's an island of dogs! There are dogs in the water, near the trees, on the house - dogs everywhere!' Two men came out of the house. 'Hassel! Lindstram!' Amundsen said. 'It's good to see you! How many dogs do you have for me?' 'Ninety-nine, Roald,' said Hassel. 'The best ninety-nine dogs from Greenland. And they're very happy! They don't work; they just eat and play all day! They're having a wonderful summer here!' 'Good, good.' Amundsen laughed. 'But that's finished now. Hey, Bjaaland! Stop laughing - come down here and help me. Let's get all these dogs onto the ship!' It was not easy. The dogs were fat and strong, and they didn't want to go on the ship. But at last, after three hours' hard work, all ninety-nine were on the ship, and the Fram went out to sea again. The men were not happy. The weather was bad, the dogs were dirty, and some of the men were ill. They began to ask questions. 'Why are we bringing dogs with us?' asked one man, Johansen. 'We're going thousands of kilometres south, past Cape Horn, and then north to Alaska. Why not wait, and get dogs in Alaska?' 'Don't ask me,' said his friend, Helmer Hanssen, 'I don't understand it.' The men talked for a long time. Then, on September 9th, Amundsen called everyone to the back of the ship. He stood quietly and looked at them. Behind him was a big map. It was not a map of the Arctic. It was a map of Antarctica. Bjaaland looked at Helmer Hanssen, and laughed. Then Amundsen began to speak. 'Boys,' he said. 'I know you are unhappy. You often ask me difficult questions, and I don't answer. Well, I'm going to answer all those questions now, today. 6 The Coldest Place on Earth 'We began to work for this journey two years ago. Then, we wanted to be the first men at the North Pole. But last year, Peary, an American, found the North Pole. So America was first to the North Pole, not Norway. We're going there, but we're too late.' 'I don't understand this,' Bjaaland thought. 'Why is Amundsen talking about the North Pole, with a map of Antarctica behind him?' Amundsen stopped for a minute, and looked at all the men slowly. No one said anything. 'We have to go a long way south before we get to Alaska,' he said. 'Very near Antarctica, you know. And Captain Scott, the Englishman, is going to the South Pole this year. He wants ta+ put his British flag there. An American flag at the North Pole, a British flag at the South Pole.' Bjaaland began to understand. He started to smile and couldn't stop. He was warm and excited. 'Well, boys,' Amundsen said slowly. 'Do we want the British to put their flag at the South Pole first? How fast can we travel? We have a lot of dogs, and some of the most wonderful skiers on earth - Bjaaland here is the best in Norway! So I have an idea, boys. Let's go to the South Pole, and put the Norwegian flag there before the British! What do you say?' For a minute or two it was very quiet. Amundsen waited, and the men watched him and thought. Then Bjaaland laughed. 'Yes!' he said. 'Why not? It's a ski race, isn't it, and the English can't ski! It's a wonderful idea, of course! Let's go!' Chapter 3 The Ponies 0 n October 27th, the Terra Nova arrived in Wellington, New Zealand. When Scott came off the ship, a newspaper man walked up to him. 'Captain Scott! Captain Scott! Can I talk to you, please!' he said. Terra Nova 8 The Coldest Place on Earth The Ponies 9 Scott stopped and smiled. 'Yes, of course,' he said. 'What do you want to know?' 'Are you going to win?' the man asked. 'Win?' Scott asked. 'Win what?' 'Win the race to the South Pole, of course,' the newspaper man said. 'It's a race between you and Amundsen, now. Look at this!' He gave a newspaper to Scott. Scott looked at it. It said: M RACES SCOm 0 SOUTH P n! 'says Amundsen Scott's face went white. 'Give me that!' he said. He took the newspaper and read it carefully. The newspaper man watched him, and waited. 'Well, Captain Scott,' he said at last. 'Who's going to win this race? Tell me that!' Scott looked at him angrily. 'This is stupid!' he said. 'It's not a race! I came here to learn about the Antarctic - I'm not interested in Amundsen, or in races!' Then he walked back onto his ship, with the newspaper in his hand. Later that day, he talked to his men. He gave them the newspaper, and laughed. 'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'We're in front of Amundsen, and we have more men, and more money. He has only eight men, and a lot of dogs. I know about dogs - they don't work in the Antarctic. We have sixteen men and the new motor sledges - they are much better. And tomorrow the ponies are coming. We need ponies, motor sledges, and good strong British men - that's all. Forget about Amundsen! He's not important!' Scott asked Oates to look after the ponies, but he did not let Oates buy them. When Oates first saw the ponies, in New Zealand, he was very unhappy. Most of the ponies were old, and some of them were ill. 'They're beautiful ponies, Titus,' Scott said. 'They come from China - they're wonderful ponies!' Oates looked at them angrily, and said nothing. Then he asked: 'Where is their food, Captain?' 'Here!' Scott opened a door. Oates looked inside. He thought for a minute. 'We need more food than this, Captain Scott! These ponies are going to work in the coldest place on earth - they need a lot of food - more than this!' Scott smiled quietly. 'We can't take more food on this ship, Titus. Where can we put it? But it doesn't matter, old boy. They're very strong ponies, you know. The best ponies on earth.' Later that night, Oates wrote a letter to his mother. There are nineteen ponies on the Terra Nova now, he wrote. All the ponies are in a small room at the front of the ship. W e eat our food in the room under the ponies, so our table is often wet and 10 The Coldest Place on Earth dirty. Scott makes a lot of mistakes, I think, and Antarctica is a very dangerous place. Chapter 4 Food Depots T he two ships, Terra Nova and Fram, arrived in Antarctica, in January 1911, at the end of summer. The Englishmen and the Norwegians wanted to stay on the ice all winter. They wanted to be ready to go to the South Pole at the beginning of the next Antarctic summer. The dogs pulled the Norwegians' sledges. They ran quickly over the snow and pulled the big sledges from the ship onto the ice. The men ran beside them on skis. They put a big wooden house on the ice. The house was full of food, and skis, and sledges. They called it Framheim. 0 ~ I c . j .rmt tht, /~onies o?z the 'I'crra S o v a Framheim 12 The Coldest Place on Earth Outside the house, the dogs lived in holes under the snow. When the house was ready, the men made their first journey south. Before the winter, they wanted to take a lot of food south, and leave it in depots. For the long journey to the Pole, they needed a lot of food, and they couldn't carry it all with them. On February loth, five men, three sledges, eighteen dogs, and half a tonne of food left Framheim and went south. It was easy. The weather was warm for the Antarctic, between -7' Centigrade and -17' Centigrade. The snow was good, and the dogs and skis went fast. They went fifty or sixty kilometres every day. After four days they reached 80' South, and made the first depot. Amundsen made his depot very carefully. It was very important to find it again, next summer. So he put a big black The first depot Food Depots 13 flag on top. Then he put ten flags to the east of the depot - each flag half a kilometre from the next - and ten flags to the west. So there were flags for five kilometres to the left of the depot, and five kilometres to the right. Then they went back to Framheim, and took some more food south, this time to 82' South. This time it was harder. The temperature was sometimes 4 0 ' Centigrade, and there were strong winds with a lot of snow. The dogs and men were very tired, and the tents and boots were bad. At the second depot, they put out sixty flags, to help them find it again. They came back to Framheim on March 23rd. It was nearly winter in the Antarctic. Their ship Fram was far away now, near South America. They were alone on the ice. Oates went with Scott to make the first British depot. They left Cape Evans on January 25th. There were thirteen men, eight ponies, and twenty-six dogs. The dogs were faster than the ponies - they ran quickly over the top of the snow, but the ponies' feet went through it. Every morning the ponies started first, and the dogs started two hours later, because they ran faster. At night, the dogs made warm holes under the snow, but the ponies stood on top of the snow. It was -20° Centigrade. After fifteen days Oates talked to Scott. There was a strong wind, and the two men's faces were white with snow. 14 The Coldest Place on Earth A Long Cold Winter 15 'Three of these ponies are ill, Captain,' Oates said. 'They can't go on.' 'Don't be stupid, Oates,' Scott answered. 'They're good strong animals - the best ponies on earth.' 'Not these three,' Oates said. 'They're ill, and unhappy, and now they can't walk. Let's kill them, and leave the meat here, in the snow. We can eat it, or the dogs can.' 'Of course not!' Scott said angrily. 'These ponies are our friends, they work hard for us. I don't kill my friends!' Three days later, two of the ponies were dead. Scott's men were slower than Amundsen's; it took them twenty-four days to get to 80' South. They made a big depot there, and put one large black flag on top of it. Then they went back to Cape Evans. Terra Nova ut Cape bvans Their camp was on an island in the ice, and the sea ice moved sometimes. There were holes in the ice, and black sea water under it. One day seven ponies went through the ice into the sea, and died. One motor sledge also went into the sea. Chapter 5 A Long Cold Winter I t was dark for four months. Outside the wooden house at Framheim, it was often -60' Centigrade. The dogs lived in warm holes under the snow. The men stayed in the house, and worked in their rooms under the snow. The skis and sledges came from the best shops in Norway, but Bjaaland wasn't happy with them. He changed a lot of things on the skis and sledges. Soon the sledges were stronger than before. The skis were better and faster, too. Bjaaland changed a lot of things All the Norwegians on the sledges. 16 The Coldest Place on Earth worked hard. They looked after their dogs, and worked on their equipment - the sledges, skis, tents. Every day they thought about their journey to the Pole, and talked about it. And every day, Amundsen thought about Scott. One day, in midwinter, he talked to his men. 'Let's start early, before Scott,' Amundsen said. 'Remember, Scott has more men than us, and he has motor sledges, too. Perhaps they can go faster than us.' Bjaaland laughed. 'Oh no, they can't go faster than me,' he said. 'On snow, nothing can go faster than a good man on skis.' 'We don't know,' Amundsen said. 'You're the best skier in Norway, but you get tired, and dogs get tired, too. Motor sledges don't get tired. They can go all day and all night.' Johansen laughed angrily. 'That's stupid,' he said. 'Perhaps the motor sledges can go all night, but the Englishmen can't. The English can't win, Roald - they don't understand snow, but we do. And they're too slow.' 'Perhaps,' Amundsen said. 'But I want to win this race. So we're going to start early! Do you understand?' It was quiet and warm inside Framheim. Bjaaland looked at Amundsen, and though about the long, cold journey in front of him. He thought about the dogs in their holes under the snow, and listened to the wind over the house. 'When, Roald?' he said quietly. 'On August 24th. The sun comes back on that day. We start then.' 'But we can't!' Johansen said. He looked angry, and A Long Cold Winter 17 Inside Framheim unhappy. 'That's too early! We can't start then - it's dangerous and stupid!' Amundsen looked at Johansen coldly. 'You're wrong, Johansen,' he said. 'We want to win, remember? So we start on August 24th.' Bjaaland listened to the winter wind outside. In Scott's camp, at Cape Evans, no one talked about Amundsen and no one worked hard. They had good food, and they played football on the snow. They wrote a newspaper- TheSouth Polar 18 The Coldest Place on Earth A Long Cold Winter 19 In Scott's camp at Cape Evans they had good food. Times - and read books. No one learnt to ski, no one worked on the motor sledges. Twice, men went for long journeys across the snow. They walked, and pulled the sledges themselves. Oates stayed at Cape Evans and looked after his ponies. Over the window in Cape Evans, Scott put a map of Antarctica. With a pen, he made a line from Cape Evans to the South Pole, and he put a little British Flag at the Pole. Under the map, Scott wrote the day for the start of their journey. W e start o n November 3rd, he wrote. We start on November 3rd, he wrote. A Bad Start 21 Chapter 6 A Bad Start 0 n August 23rd, the Norwegians' sledges were ready. They took them outside, and the dogs pulled them across the ice. The sun came up for a half an hour, but it was too cold: -46' Centigrade. They could not travel in that weather. They went back to Framheim and waited. They waited two weeks, until September 8th. Then, with the temperature at -37' Centigrade, they started. They ran happily across the snow to the south - eight men, seven sledges, and eighty-six dogs. Only Lindstr~m, the cook, stayed behind in Framheim. At first everything went well. They went twenty-eight kilometres on Saturday, and twenty- eight kilometres on Sunday. It was easy. At first everything went well. Then, on Monday, the temperature went down - to -56' Centigrade. There was white fog in front of their faces. They couldn't see anything. But they travelled twenty-eight kilometres. That night, in their tents, they nearly died of cold. Next day, they stopped and made snow houses. Inside the snow houses, it was warm. But everyone was unhappy. 'I told you, Roald!' Johansen said. 'Even September is too early! We can't travel in this cold. Do you want us to die? Let's go back and wait for better weather.' Amundsen was very angry. He was angry with Johansen, but he was angry with himself, too. He knew Johansen was right. 'All right,' he said slowly. 'We can go on to the depot at 80' South, leave the food there, and then go back. We can't do more than that.' It was thirty-seven kilometres to the depot. The wind was in their faces all day. Two dogs died on the way. At the depot, they did not stop. They put out the food and the flags, turned round, and went north. At last the wind was behind them. The dogs ran quickly, and the men sat on the empty sledges. They went faster and faster. It was like a race. Amundsen was on Wisting's sledge, and soon he, Wisting, and Hanssen were three or four kilometres in front. Soon they were alone. They travelled seventy-five kilometres in nine hours, and they reached Framheim at four o'clock that afternoon. Bjaaland arrived two hours later, with two more men. But the last two - Johansen and Prestrud - went more slowly. Their 22 The Coldest Place on Earth Motor Sledges and Mountains 23 dogs were tired, their feet were wet and cold, they had no food, and they were alone in the dark. The temperature was -51' Centigrade. They reached Framheim at midnight. Next morning, Johansen was angry. In front of everyone, he said: 'You were wrong, Roald. September was too early. I told you but you didn't listen. And then you left us alone and we nearly died in the cold! You're a bad captain - I'm a better captain than you are!' Amundsen was very angry. But at first he said nothing, because he knew that Johansen was right. Then, that evening, he gave a letter to Johansen. It said: You aren't coming to the Pole with me. When I go south, you can take some dogs and go east to King Edward VII Land. You can go with Prestrud and Stubberud. You can be the first men to go there - but not to the South Pole! The Norwegians stayed in Framheim and waited. They lay in bed, listened to the wind outside, and thought about Scott and his motor sledges. Chapter 7 Motor Sledges and Mountains S cott had two motor sledges now. They were the first motor sledges in the Antarctic - the first on earth. On October 24th, the motor sledges started south from Cape Evans. Four men went with them, but Scott stayed at Cape Evans for another week. Oates was unhappy. He wrote to his mother: W e had a very bad winter here. 1 don't like Scott. W e were here all winter, but he didn't learn to ski, or to drive dogs. Our equipment is bad, and he doesn't think about other people. I'm going to sleep in his tent on the journey, but I don't want to. The first motor sledge in Antarctica