In the crowd which cheered Nansen was a lad seventeen years old who also dreamed dreams of adventure. That lad was Roald Amundsen. “Some day,” said Roald, “I’ll travel as far north as I can go. I’ll stand at the North Pole—the spot at the very top of the world.” People had known for a long time then that the earth is a big ball. The spot at the very top of the big ball is called the North Pole and the spot at the very bottom of the ball is called the South Pole. No matter which way a person standing at the North Pole looked he would be looking south toward the other end of the ball. If he stood at the South Pole, no matter which way he looked, he would be looking north towards the top of the ball. But when Roald was dreaming his dreams no one had stood at either the North Pole or the South Pole. Roald thought, “Perhaps I can be the first to visit the North Pole.” How would he know when he reached a spot which no one had seen? Roald had seen the instrument which sailors use to tell direction when out at sea. It is a needle that always points toward the north star and that star is almost directly overhead at the North Pole. Roald knew that he could carry such a needle with him. With it he would be able to tell when he came to the North Pole. For there the needle could no longer point north, so it would move about trying to find north. But Roald was then too young for such an adventure. Ten years passed after Nansen’s return before he began to prepare for a journey to the North Pole. He was to sail in the same boat that Nansen had used, the _Fram_. Amundsen’s party was almost ready to start from Norway when news came that an American, named Peary, had reached the North Pole. Already the Stars and Stripes floated over that spot at the top of the earth. Roald Amundsen still longed to visit the North Pole, but he decided not to go at that time. He said, “No one has yet reached the South Pole—at the bottom of the earth. We will go to the South Pole. Perhaps the Norwegian flag may be the first to float there.” On a bright sunny day in August, 1910, about a year after Peary found the North Pole, Amundsen and his men set out on the long journey from Norway to the South Pole at the bottom of the earth. He knew that the Antarctic (ant ark tic)—the land and water at the bottom of the earth—is a place of ice and snow. Amundsen knew much about cold lands of ice and snow as he had always lived in Norway. He had traveled on skis ever since he was a small boy. He had read many books about the land to which he was going. He planned everything very carefully so that he and his men would have every chance to succeed. He said, “If a person starting on a hard task prepares for the task carefully, he is likely to succeed—and then people say he had _good luck_. If a person does not prepare carefully, he is likely to fail—and then people say he had _bad luck_.”