The 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. 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.

The man smiled, and walked quickly 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, 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.