One: St. Paul's, 14 February 1913  

I am more proud of my most loved son's goodness than for anything he has done and all this glory & honour the country is giving him is naturally a gratification to a Mother's heart but very little consolation-you know how much my dear son was to me, and I have never a bitter memory or an unkind word to recall.  
—Hannah Scott, 21 February 1913  

Your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying "What mean these stones?"  
—Joshua IV. 21. Scott Memorial, Port Chalmers, New Zealand  

In the early hours of 10 February 1913, an old converted whaler "crept like a phantom" into the little harbour of Oamaru on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island and dropped anchor. For many of the men on board this was their first smell of grass and trees in over twenty-six months, but with secrecy at a premium only two of her officers were landed before the ship weighed anchor and slipped back out to sea to disappear into the pre-dawn gloom from which she had emerged.  

While the ship steamed offshore in a self-imposed quarantine, the officers were taken by the nightwatchman to the harbour master's home, and first thing next morning to the Oamaru post office. More than two years earlier an elaborate and coded arrangement had been set in place to release what everyone had then hoped would be very different news, but with contractual obligations still to be honoured, a cable was sent and the operator confined to house arrest until Central News could exploit its exclusive rights to the scoop the two men had brought.  

The ship that had so quietly stolen into Oamaru harbour...