OHYAT: Hundred-to-One Chances Crop Up Nine Times out of Ten

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO TODAY, Capt. Scott was writing a letter home, when

"Cherry" has just come up to me with a very anxious face to say that I must not count on his navigating powers. For the moment I didn't know what he was driving at, but then I remembered that some months ago I said that it would be a good thing for all the officers going South to have some knowledge of navigation so that in an emergency they would know how to steer a sledge home. It appears that "Cherry" thereupon commenced a serious and arduous course of study of abstruse navigational problems which he found exceedingly tough and now despaired mastering. Of course there is not one chance in a hundred that that he will ever have to consider navigation on our journey and in that one chance the problem must be of the simplest nature, but it makes matters much easier for me to have men who take the details of one's work so seriously and who strive so simply and honestly to make it successful.

No prizes for guessing who will find that he really ought to have learned to navigate, before this all plays out ...