The Home Of The Blizzard Part 13

Realm of purest alabaster-white, Wreathed in a vast infinitude of light; The royal orb swings to thy summer gaze A glitt'ring azure world of crystal days.

The lorn bird-voices of an unseen land- No hue of forest, gleam of ocean sand- Rise in a ceaseless plaint of raucous din, On northern tides the bergs come floating in.

The wind-sprites murmuring in hinter-snow- The pent heart-throbbings of the wan plateau- Wing through the pulsing spell thrown o'er the sea, In wild and shrieking blizzard minstrelsy.

Swirl of the drift-cloud's shimm'ring sleet; Race of the spray-smoke's hurtling sheet Swelling trail of the streaming, sunbright foam, Wafting sinuous brash to an ice-field home.

Eddy-wraiths o'er the splintered schist- Torrent spume down the glacier hissed!

Throbbing surge of the ebbing seaward gust, Raping stillness vast in its madd'ning l.u.s.t.

Lotus-floe 'neath the Barrier brink, Starting sheer--a marble blink- Pelting shafts from the show'ring arrow-blast Strike--ill the blackened flood seethe riven past.

Glow of the vibrant, yellow west Pallid fades in the dread unrest.

Low'ring shades through the fury-stricken night Rack the screaming void in shudd'ring might.

Requiem peace from the hinter-snows Soft as river music flows.

Dawn in a flushing glamour tints the sea; Serene her thrill of rhythmic ecstasy.

Sledging was out of the question. Indeed, we recognized how fortunate we were not to have pushed farther south in March. Had we advanced, it is more than likely that provisions would have been exhausted before we could have located the Hut in the sea of drift. Our hopes were now centred on midwinter calms.

Looking through my diary, I notice that on March 24, "we experienced a rise in spirits because of the improved weather." I find the average velocity of the wind for that day to have been forty-five miles per hour, corresponding to a "strong gale" on the Beaufort scale. This tells its own story.

When the high wind blew off sh.o.r.e, there was no backswell, on account of the pack-ice to the north quelling the sea. The arrival of a true ocean swell meant that the pack had been dispersed. On March 24 such appears to have been the case, for then, during the day, a big northerly swell set in, dashing over the ice-foot and scattering seaweed on the rocks.

After the equinox, the temperatures remained in the vicinity of zero, Fahrenheit. The penguins took to the sea, and, save for the glimpse of an occasional petrel on the wing, the landscape was desolate.

It was high time that our programme of construction was completed, but, however much we tried, it was impossible to do a great deal in winds exceeding fifty miles an hour. By taking advantage of days freest from drift, the exterior of the Hangar was completed by April 6. After the air-tractor sledge had been moved inside, the snow was piled so high on the leeward face, that the shelter became naturally blocked with a rampart of snow which served admirably in place of the wall of tarpaulin which we originally intended to use.

Bickerton could now proceed at leisure to make any necessary alterations. The Hangar was also used as a store for many articles which had been crowded into odd corners or rescued from the snow outside. To increase its size, tunnels were afterwards driven into the bank of snow and timber was stowed in these so as to be safe from burial and loss.

The building was finished just in the nick of time. Snow came down so thickly that had the falls occurred a few days earlier, the cases from which the place was constructed would have been effectually buried and the construction made an impossibility.

But for the wind, the Hut would have been lost to sight. Still, it was completely surrounded by ma.s.sive drifts, and the snow was driven by the wind past the canvas flap and through the entrance, until the veranda became choked.

Close, who was night-watchman during the early morning hours of April 7, had the greatest difficulty in getting outside to attend to his duties.

To dig his way through the entrance, reach the instruments and to return occupied a whole hour.

We were inundated with snow; even a portion of the roof was buried.

The situation required immediate attention; so it was decided to make a tunnel connecting the entrance veranda with the store veranda. From the north-western end of the latter, an out-draught had established itself, preserving a vertical funnel-like opening in the snow bank, always free for entrance or exit. This proved a fortunate accident.

Further, a second tunnel, over twenty feet in length, was driven out from the original entrance with a view to reaching the surface at a point beyond the lee of the Hut. It was thought that the scouring effect of the wind, there, would keep the opening of the tunnel free of drift.

But when completed, it filled rapidly with snow and had to be sealed. It was then used to receive slop-water. While the fever for excavation was at its height, Whetter drove, as an off-shoot to the first, another tunnel which came to be used as a nursery for the pups.

At this stage, to leave the Hut, it was necessary to crawl through a low trap-door in the wall of the inside or entrance veranda; the way then led to the connecting tunnel and onwards to the store veranda; finally one climbed through a manhole in the snow into the elements without.

From the store veranda there was access to the Hangar by a hinged door in the common wall, and, as an additional convenience, a trap-door was made in the roof of the inner veranda to be used during spells of clear weather or in light drift.

The old landmarks became smothered in snow, making the Hut's position a matter of greater uncertainty. A journey by night to the magnetic huts was an outing with a spice of adventure.

Climbing out of the veranda, one was immediately swallowed in the chaos of hurtling drift, the darkness sinister and menacing. The shrill wind fled by--

...the noise of a drive of the Dead, Striving before the irresistible will Through the strange dusk of this, the Debatable land Between their place and ours.

Unseen wizard hands clutched with insane fury, hacked and harried. It was "the raw-ribbed Wild that abhors all life, the Wild that would crush and rend."

Cowering blindly, pushing fiercely through the turmoil, one strove to keep a course to reach the rocks in which the huts were hidden--such and such a bearing on the wind--so far. When the rocks came in sight, the position of the final destination was only deduced by recognising a few surrounding objects.

On the return journey, the vicinity of the Hut would be heralded by such accidents as tripping over the "wireless" ground wires or kicking against a box or a heap of coal briquettes. These clues, properly followed up, would lead to the Hut itself, or at least to its shelving roof. In the very thick drifts it was even possible to stand on portions of the roof without any notion of the fact. Fossicking about, one kept on the alert for the feel of woodwork. When found and proved to be too extensive to be a partially buried box, it might safely be concluded to be some part of the roof, and only required to be skirted in order to reach the vertical entrance. The lost man often discovered this pitfall by dropping suddenly through into the veranda.

At the entrance to the tunnel, the roar of the tempest died away into a rumble, the trap-door opened and perhaps the strains of the gramophone would come in a kind of flippant defiance from the interior. Pa.s.sing through the vestibule and work-room one beheld a scene in utter variance with the outer h.e.l.l. Here were warm bunks, rest, food, light and companionship--for the time being, heaven! Outside, the crude and naked elements of a primitive and desolate world flowed in writhing torrents.

The night-watchman's duty of taking the meteorological observations at the screen adjacent to the Hut was a small matter compared with the foregoing. First of all, it was necessary for him to don a complete outfit of protective clothing. Dressing and undressing were tedious, and absorbed a good deal of time. At the screen, he would spend a lively few minutes wrestling in order to hold his ground, forcing the door back against the pressure of wind, endeavouring to make the light shine on the instruments, and, finally, clearing them of snow and reading them.

For illumination a hurricane lantern wrapped in a calico wind-shield was first used, to be displaced later by an electrical signalling-lamp and, while the batteries lasted, by a light permanently fixed by Hannam in the screen itself. To a.s.sist in finding the manhole on his return, the night-watchman was in the habit of leaving a light burning in the outer veranda.

I remember waking up early one morning to find the Hut unusually cold.

On rising, I discovered Hurley also awake, busy lighting the fire which had died out. There was no sign of Correll, the night-watchman, and we found that the last entry in the log-book had been made several hours previously. Hurley dressed in full burberrys and went out to make a search, in which he was soon successful.

It appeared that Correll, running short of coal during the early morning hours, had gone out to procure some from the stack. While he was returning to the entrance, the wind rolled him over a few times, causing him to lose his bearings. It was blowing a hurricane, the temperature was -70 F., and the drift-snow was so thick as to be wall-like in opacity. He abandoned his load of coal, and, after searching about fruitlessly for some time in the darkness, he decided to wait for dawn.

Hurley found him about twenty yards from the back of the Hut.

The suppression of outdoor occupations reacted in an outburst of indoor work. The smaller room had been well fitted up as a workshop, and all kinds of schemes were in progress for adapting our sledging-gear and instruments to the severe conditions. Correll worked long hours to keep up with the demands made upon him. n.o.body was idle during the day, for, when there was nothing else to be done, there always remained the manufacture and alteration of garments and crampons.

As soon as the wind abated to a reasonable velocity, there was a rush to the outside jobs. Lulls would come unexpectedly, activity inside ceased, and the Hut, as seen by a spectator, resembled an ants' nest upon which a strange foot had trodden: eighteen men swarming through the manhole in rapid succession, hurrying hither and thither.

The neighbouring sea still remained free from an ice-crust. This, of course, did not mean that freezing was not going on continuously. On the contrary, the chilling was no doubt accelerated, but the bulk of the ice was carried off to the north as fast as it was formed. Quant.i.ties, however, remained as ground-ice, anch.o.r.ed to the kelp and stones on the bottom. Gazing down through the clear waters one saw a white, mamillated sheath covering the jungle of giant seaweed, recalling a forest after a heavy snowfall. The ice, instead of being a dead weight bearing down the branches, tended to float, and, when acc.u.mulated in large ma.s.ses, sometimes succeeded in rising to the surface, uprooting and lifting great lengths of seaweed with it. One branching stem, found floating in the harbour, measured eighteen feet in length.

Whenever a temporary calm intervened, a skin of ice quickly appeared over the whole surface of the water. In the early stages, this formation consisted of loose, blade-like crystals, previously floating freely below the surface and rising by their own buoyancy. At the surface, if undisturbed, they soon became cemented together. For example, during a calm interval on April 6, within the interval of an hour, an even crust, one inch thick, covered the sea. But the wind returned before the ice was sufficiently strong to resist it, and it all broke up and drifted away to the north, except a piece which remained wedged firmly between the sides of the boat harbour.

In the calm weather, abundant "worms" freely swimming, jelly-fish, pteropods and small fish were observed. Traps were lowered along the edge of the harbour-ice and dredgings were made in every possible situation. The bulk of the biological collecting was effected under circ.u.mstances in which Hunter and Laseron might well have given up work in disgust. For instance, I noted in my diary that on May 16, with an off sh.o.r.e wind of forty-three miles per hour, they and several others were dredging from the edge of the slippery bay-ice. The temperature at the time was -2 degrees F.

During April the head of the boat harbour froze over permanently, the ice reaching a thickness of eighteen inches in ten days. By that time it was strong enough to be suitable for a tide-gauge. This was one of Bage's charges, destined to take him out for many months in fair and foul weather.

There were several occasions in April when the velocity of the wind exceeded ninety miles an hour. On the evening of the 26th, the wind slackened, and for part of the 27th had almost fallen to a calm. This brought the optimists to the fore, once again, with the theory that the worst was over. The prediction was far from being fulfilled, for, as the days pa.s.sed, the average velocity steadily rose. On May 11 the average for the twenty-four hours was eighty miles per hour. By that time the Hut had been further protected by a crescent of cases, erected behind the first break-wind. In height this erection stood above the Hangar, and, when the snow became piled in a solid ramp on the leeward side, it was more compact than ever. Inside the Hut extra struts were introduced, stiffening the princ.i.p.al rafters on the southern side. It was rea.s.suring to know that these precautions had been taken, for, on May 15, the wind blew at an average velocity of ninety miles per hour throughout the whole twenty-four hours.

Having failed to demolish us by dogged persistence, the hurricane tried new tactics on the evening of May 24, in the form of a terrific series of Herculean gusts. As we learned afterwards, the momentary velocity of these doubtless approached two hundred miles per hour. At 11.30 P.M. the situation was cheerfully discussed, though every one was tuned up to a nervous pitch as the Hut creaked and shuddered under successive blows.

It seemed very doubtful whether the roof would resist the gusts, and the feasibility of the meat cellar as a last haven of refuge was discussed.

After the pa.s.sage of each gust, the barometer dropped, rising again immediately afterwards. Similar pulsations of the barometer were observed many times later in the year. The maximum sudden movement noted was one-fifth inch. Had the interior of the Hut been more freely in communication with the outside air, instead of resembling a hermetically sealed box, the "kicks" would undoubtedly have been much greater.

Cyclonic gusts were repeated a few days after, when the upper tiers of boxes composing the break-wind were thrown down and pebbles from the moraine were hurled on the roof. The average velocity of the wind for each of the three autumn months was as follows: March, 49 miles per hour; April, 51.5 miles per hour, and May 60.7 miles per hour.

On May 1 the temperatures became lower, so that it was difficult to move about in the gales without the face getting frost-bitten. Our usual remedy when this occurred was to hold a mitt over the part affected; thus sheltered, its circulation of blood was soon re-established, unless the cold were very intense. In the extremities--the fingers and toes--warmth was not so easily restored.

Returning from attending the instruments at noon on May 22, Madigan, according to the usual habit, before taking off his wind-proof clothes, commenced clearing away the ice adhering to his helmet and face. One white patch refused to leave the side of his face, until some one observed that it was a frost-bite, and acquainted him of the fact.

Frost-bites that day were excusable enough, for the wind was blowing between ninety-five and hundred miles per hour, there was dense drifting snow and a temperature of -28 degrees F.

We had found an accursed country. On the fringe of an unspanned continent along whose gelid coast our comrades had made their home--we knew not where--we dwelt where the chill breath of a vast, Polar wilderness, quickening to the rushing might of eternal blizzards, surged to the northern seas. Already, and for long months we were beneath "frost-fettered Winter's frown."

CHAPTER VIII DOMESTIC LIFE