Across the white expanse of Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf, three figures moved north toward the open water beyond their horizon, and the ship that waited for them there. It was January 1903, and the bright sun of austral summer would not set. A skua, one of the large brownish-gray seabirds common around McMurdo Sound, might have surveyed the trio from overhead, assessing whether there was anything of interest on the sled that two of them pulled. The inquisitive birds often divebomb human interlopers on their continent, and claim whatever they…
