The Voyages of Captain Scott | Page 3

it on a tempting sapling. 'Very well,' his father said
grimly, 'but remember, if you hurt yourself, don't expect any sympathy
from me.' The knife was opened, and to cut himself rather badly proved
as easy as falling into the leat. The father, however, had not noticed,
and the boy put his bleeding hand into his pocket and walked on
unconcernedly. He was really considerably damaged; and this is a good
story of a child of seven who all his life suffered extreme nausea from
the sight of blood; even in the Discovery days, to get accustomed to
'seeing red,' he had to force himself to watch Dr. Wilson skinning his

specimens.
When he was about eight Con passed out of the hands of a governess,
and became a school-boy, first at a day school in Stoke Damerel and
later at Stubbington House, Fareham. He rode grandly between
Oatlands and Stoke Damerel on his pony, Beppo, which bucked in vain
when he was on it, but had an ingratiating way of depositing other
riders on the road. From what one knows of him later this is a
characteristic story. One day he dismounted to look over a gate at a
view which impressed him (not very boyish this), and when he
recovered from a brown study there was no Beppo to be seen. He
walked the seven miles home, but what was characteristic was that he
called at police-stations on the way to give practical details of his loss
and a description of the pony. Few children would have thought of this,
but Scott was naturally a strange mixture of the dreamy and the
practical, and never more practical than immediately after he had been
dreamy. He forgot place and time altogether when thus abstracted. I
remember the first time he dined with me, when a number of
well-known men had come to meet him, he arrived some two hours late.
He had dressed to come out, then fallen into one of his reveries,
forgotten all about the engagement, dined by himself and gone early to
bed. Just as he was falling asleep he remembered where he should be,
arose hastily and joined us as speedily as possible. It was equally
characteristic of him to say of the other guests that it was pleasant to a
sailor to meet so many interesting people. When I said that to them the
sailor was by far the most interesting person in the room he shouted
with mirth. It always amused Scott to find that anyone thought him a
person of importance.
[Illustration: Robert F. Scott at the age of 13 as a naval cadet.]
I suppose everyone takes for granted that in his childhood, as later
when he made his great marches, Scott was muscular and strongly built.
This was so far from being the case that there were many anxious
consultations over him, and the local doctor said he could not become a
sailor as he could never hope to obtain the necessary number of inches
round the chest. He was delicate and inclined to be pigeon-breasted.
Judging from the portrait of him here printed, in his first uniform as a
naval cadet, all this had gone by the time he was thirteen, but
unfortunately there are no letters of this period extant and thus little can

be said of his years on the Britannia where 'you never felt hot in your
bunk because you could always twist, and sleep with your feet out at
port hole.' He became a cadet captain, a post none can reach who is not
thought well of by the other boys as well as by their instructors, but
none of them foresaw that he was likely to become anybody in
particular. He was still 'Old Mooney,' as his father had dubbed him,
owing to his dreamy mind; it was an effort to him to work hard, he cast
a wistful eye on 'slackers,' he was not a good loser, he was untidy to the
point of slovenliness, and he had a fierce temper. All this I think has
been proved to me up to the hilt, and as I am very sure that the boy of
fifteen or so cannot be very different from the man he grows into it
leaves me puzzled. The Scott I knew, or thought I knew, was physically
as hard as nails and flung himself into work or play with a vehemence I
cannot remember ever to have seen equaled. I have fished with him,
played cricket and football with him, and other games, those of his own
invention being of a particularly arduous kind, for they always had a
moment when the other players were privileged to fling a hard ball at
your undefended head. 'Slackness,' was the last quality you