The Worst Journey in the World Part 3

"March 17. 7 P.M. Strong south-west breeze all day, freshening to a full gale at night. We have had an awful day, but have managed to shift enough gear into the cave to live there temporarily. Our tempers have never been so tried during the whole of our life together, but they have stood the strain pretty successfully.... May I never have such another three trips as were those to-day. Every time the wind lulled a little I fell over to windward, and at every gust I was pitched to leeward, while a dozen times or more I was taken off my feet and dashed against the ground or against unfriendly boulders. The other two had equally bad times. d.i.c.kason hurt his knee and ankle and lost his sheath knife, and Campbell lost a compa.s.s and some revolver cartridges in the two trips they made. Altogether it was lucky we got across at all."[26]

It was a fortunate thing that this wind often blew quite clear without snowfall or drift. Two days later in the same gale the tent of the other three men collapsed on top of them at 8 A.M. At 4 P.M. the sun was going down and they settled to make their way across to their comrades. Levick tells the story as follows:

"Having done this [securing the remains of the tent, etc.], we started on our journey. This lay, first of all, across half a mile of clear blue ice, swept by the unbroken wind, which met us almost straight in the face. We could never stand up, so had to scramble the whole distance on 'all fours,' lying flat on our bellies in the gusts. By the time we had reached the other side we had had enough. Our faces had been rather badly bitten, and I have a very strong recollection of the men's countenances, which were a leaden blue, streaked with white patches of frost-bite. Once across, however, we reached the shelter of some large boulders on the sh.o.r.e of the island, and waited here long enough to thaw out our noses, ears, and cheeks. A scramble of another six hundred yards brought us to the half-finished igloo, into which we found that the rest of the party had barricaded themselves, and, after a little shouting, they came and let us in, giving us a warm welcome, and about the most welcome hot meal that I think any of us had ever eaten."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRIESTLEY AND CAMPBELL]

Priestley continues:

"After the arrival of the evicted party we made hoosh, and as we warmed up from the meal, we cheered up and had one of the most successful sing-songs we had ever had forgetting all our troubles for an hour or two. It is a pleasing picture to look back upon now, and, if I close my eyes, I can see again the little cave cut out in snow and ice with the tent flapping in the doorway, barely secured by ice-axe and shovel arranged crosswise against the side of the shaft. The cave is lighted up with three or four small blubber lamps, which give a soft yellow light.

At one end lie Campbell, d.i.c.kason and myself in our sleeping-bags, resting after the day's work, and, opposite to us, on a raised dais formed by a portion of the floor not yet levelled, Levick, Browning and Abbott sit discussing their seal hoosh, while the primus hums cheerily under the cooker containing the coloured water which served with us instead of cocoa. As the diners warm up jests begin to fly between the rival tents and the interchange is brisk, though we have the upper hand to-day, having an inexhaustible subject in the recent disaster to their tent, and their forced abandonment of their household G.o.ds. Suddenly some one starts a song with a chorus, and the noise from the primus is dwarfed immediately. One by one we go through our favourites, and the concert lasts for a couple of hours. By this time the lamps are getting low, and gradually the cold begins to overcome the effects of the hoosh and the cocoa. One after another the singers begin to shiver, and all thoughts of song disappear as we realize what we are in for. A night with one one-man bag between two men! There is a whole world of discomfort in the very thought, and no one feels inclined to jest about that for the moment.

Those jests will come all right to-morrow when the night is safely past, but this evening it is anything but a cheery subject of contemplation.

There is no help for it, however, and each of us prepares to take another man in so far as he can."[27]

In such spirit and under very similar conditions this dauntless party set about pa.s.sing through one of the most horrible winters which G.o.d has invented. They were very hungry, for the wind which kept the sea open also made the sh.o.r.e almost impossible for seals. There were red-letter days, however, such as when Browning found and killed a seal, and in its stomach, "not too far digested to be still eatable," were thirty-six fish. And what visions of joy for the future. "We never again found a seal with an eatable meal inside him, but we were always hoping to do so, and a kill was, therefore, always a gamble. Whenever a seal was sighted in future, some one said, 'Fish!' and there was always a scramble to search the beast first."[28]

They ate blubber, cooked with blubber, had blubber lamps. Their clothes and gear were soaked with blubber, and the soot blackened them, their sleeping-bags, cookers, walls and roof, choked their throats and inflamed their eyes. Blubbery clothes are cold, and theirs were soon so torn as to afford little protection against the wind, and so stiff with blubber that they would stand up by themselves, in spite of frequent sc.r.a.pings with knives and rubbings with penguin skins, and always there were underfoot the great granite boulders which made walking difficult even in daylight and calm weather. As Levick said, "the road to h.e.l.l might be paved with good intentions, but it seemed probable that h.e.l.l itself would be paved something after the style of Inexpressible Island."

But there were consolations; the long-waited-for lump of sugar: the sing-songs--and about these there hangs a story. When Campbell's Party and the remains of the Main Party forgathered at Cape Evans in November 1912, Campbell would give out the hymns for Church. The first Sunday we had 'Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him,' and the second, and the third. We suggested a change, to which Campbell asked, "Why?" We said it got a bit monotonous. "Oh no," said Campbell, "we always sang it on Inexpressible Island." It was also about the only one he knew. Apart from this I do not know whether 'Old King Cole' or the Te Deum was more popular. For reading they had David Copperfield, the Decameron, the Life of Stevenson and a New Testament. And they did Swedish drill, and they gave lectures.

Their worst difficulties were scurvy[29] and ptomaine poisoning, for which the enforced diet was responsible. From the first they decided to keep nearly all their unused rations for sledging down the coast in the following spring, and this meant that they must live till then on the seal and penguin which they could kill. The first dysentery was early in the winter, and was caused by using the salt from the sea-water. They had some Cerebos salt, however, in their sledging rations, and used it for a week, which stopped the disorder and they gradually got used to the sea-ice salt. Browning, however, who had had enteric fever in the past, had dysentery almost continually right through the winter. Had he not been the plucky, cheerful man he is, he would have died.

In June again there was another bad attack of dysentery. Another thing which worried them somewhat was the 'igloo back,' a semi-permanent kink caused by seldom being able to stand upright.

Then, in the beginning of September, they had ptomaine poisoning from meat which had been too long in what they called the oven, which was a biscuit box, hung over the blubber stove, into which they placed the frozen meat to thaw it out. This oven was found to be not quite level, and in a corner a pool of old blood, water and sc.r.a.ps of meat had collected. This and a tainted hoosh which they did not have the strength of mind to throw away in their hungry condition, seems to have caused the outbreak, which was severe. Browning and d.i.c.kason were especially bad.

They had their bad days: those first days of realization that they would not be relieved: days of depression, disease and hunger, all at once: when the seal seemed as if they would give out and they were thinking they would have to travel down the coast in the winter--but Abbott killed two seals with a greasy knife, losing the use of three fingers in the process, and saved the situation.

But they also had their good, or less-bad, days: such was mid-winter night when they held food in their hands and did not want to eat it, for they were full: or when they got through the Te Deum without a hitch: or when they killed some penguins; or got a ration of mustard plaster from the medical stores.

Never was a more cheerful or good-tempered party. They set out to see the humorous side of everything, and, if they could not do so one day, at any rate they determined to see to it the next. What is more they succeeded, and I have never seen a company of better welded men than that which joined us for those last two months in McMurdo Sound.

On September 30 they started home--so they called it. This meant a sledge journey of some two hundred miles along the coast, and its possibility depended upon the presence of sea-ice, which we have seen to have been absent at Evans Coves. It also meant crossing the Drygalski Ice Tongue, an obstacle which bulked very formidably in their imaginations during the winter. They reached the last rise of this glacier in the evening of October 10, and then saw Erebus, one hundred and fifty miles off. The igloo and the past were behind: Cape Evans and the future were in front--and the sea-ice was in as far as they could see.

d.i.c.kason was half crippled with dysentery when they started, but improved. Browning, however, was still very ill, but now they were able to eat a ration of four biscuits a day and a small amount of pemmican and cocoa which gave him a better chance than the continual meat. As they neared Granite Harbour, a month after starting, his condition was so serious that they discussed leaving him there with Levick until they could get medicine and suitable food from Cape Evans.

But their troubles were nearly over, for on reaching Cape Roberts they suddenly sighted the depot left by Taylor in the previous year. They searched round, like dogs, scratching in the drifts, and found--a whole case of biscuits: and there were b.u.t.ter and raisins and lard. Day and night merged into one long lingering feast, and when they started on again their mouths were sore[30] with eating biscuits. More, there is little doubt that the change of diet saved Browning's life. As they moved down the coast they found another depot, and yet another. They reached Hut Point on November 5.

The story of this, our Northern Party, has been told in full by the two men most able to tell it: by Campbell in the second volume of Scott's book, by Priestley in a separate volume called Antarctic Adventure.[31] I have added only these few pages because, save in so far as their adventures touch the Main Party or the Ship, it is better that I should refer the reader to these two accounts than that I should try and write again at second hand what has been already twice told. I will only say here that the history of what these men did and suffered has been overshadowed by the more tragic tale of the Polar Party. They are not men who wish for public applause, but that is no reason why the story of a great adventure should not be known; indeed, it is all the more reason why it should be known. To those who have not read it I recommend Priestley's book mentioned above, or Campbell's equally modest account in Scott's Last Expedition.[32]

The Terra Nova arrived at Cape Evans on January 18, 1913, just as we had started to prepare for another year. And so the remains of the expedition came home that spring. Scott's book was published in the autumn.

The story of Scott's Last Expedition of 1910-13 is a book of two volumes, the first volume of which is Scott's personal diary of the expedition, written from day to day before he turned into his sleeping-bag for the night when sledging, or in the intervals of the many details of organization and preparation in the hut, when at Winter Quarters. The readers of this book will probably have read that diary and the accounts of the Winter Journey, the last year, the adventures of Campbell's Party and the travels of the Terra Nova which follow. With an object which I will explain presently I quote a review of Scott's book from the pen of one of Mr. Punch's staff:[33]

"There is courage and strength and loyalty and love shining out of the second volume no less than out of the first; there were gallant gentlemen who lived as well as gallant gentlemen who died; but it is the story of Scott, told by himself, which will give the book a place among the great books of the world. That story begins in November 1910, and ends on March 29, 1912, and it is because when you come to the end, you will have lived with Scott for sixteen months, that you will not be able to read the last pages without tears. That message to the public was heartrending enough when it first came to us, but it was as the story of how a great hero fell that we read it; now it is just the tale of how a dear friend died.

To have read this book is to have known Scott; and if I were asked to describe him, I think I should use some such words as those which, six months before he died, he used of the gallant gentleman who went with him, 'Bill' Wilson. 'Words must always fail when I talk of him,' he wrote; 'I believe he is the finest character I ever met--the closer one gets to him the more there is to admire. Every quality is so solid and dependable. Whatever the matter, one knows Bill will be sound, shrewdly practical, intensely loyal, and quite unselfish.' That is true of Wilson, if Scott says so, for he knew men; but most of it is also true of Scott himself. I have never met a more beautiful character than that which is revealed unconsciously in these journals. His humanity, his courage, his faith, his steadfastness, above all, his simplicity, mark him as a man among men. It is because of his simplicity that his last message, the last entries in his diary, his last letters, are of such undying beauty.

The letter of consolation (and almost of apology) which, on the verge of death, he wrote to Mrs. Wilson, wife of the man dying at his side, may well be Scott's monument. He could have no finer. And he has raised a monument for those other gallant gentlemen who died--Wilson, Oates, Bowers, Evans. They are all drawn for us clearly by him in these pages; they stand out unmistakably. They, too, come to be friends of ours, their death is as n.o.ble and as heartbreaking. And there were gallant gentlemen, I said, who lived--you may read amazing stories of them. Indeed, it is a wonderful tale of manliness that these two volumes tell us. I put them down now; but I have been for a few days in the company of the brave ...

and every hour with them has made me more proud for those that died and more humble for myself."

I have quoted this review at length, because it gives the atmosphere of hero-worship into which we were plunged on our return. That atmosphere was very agreeable; but it was a refracting medium through which the expedition could not be seen with scientific accuracy--and the expedition was nothing if not scientific. Whilst we knew what we had suffered and risked better than any one else, we also knew that science takes no account of such things; that a man is no better for having made the worst journey in the world; and that whether he returns alive or drops by the way will be all the same a hundred years hence if his records and specimens come safely to hand.

In addition to Scott's Last Expedition and Priestley's Antarctic Adventures, Griffith Taylor, who was physiographer to the Main Party, has written an account of the two geological journeys of which he was the leader, and of the domestic life of the expedition at Hut Point and at Cape Evans, up to February 1912, in a book called With Scott: The Silver Lining. This book gives a true glimpse into the more boisterous side of our life, with much useful information about the scientific part.

Though it bears little upon this book I cannot refrain from drawing the reader's attention to, and earning some of his thanks for, a little book called Antarctic Penguins, written by Levick, the Surgeon of Campbell's Party. It is almost entirely about Adelie penguins. The author spent the greater part of a summer living, as it were, upon sufferance, in the middle of one of the largest penguin rookeries in the world. He has described the story of their crowded life with a humour with which, perhaps, we hardly credited him, and with a simplicity which many writers of children's stories might envy. If you think your own life hard, and would like to leave it for a short hour I recommend you to beg, borrow or steal this tale, and read and see how the penguins live. It is all quite true.

So there is already a considerable literature about the expedition, but no connected account of it as a whole. Scott's diary, had he lived, would merely have formed the basis of the book he would have written. As his personal diary it has an interest which no other book could have had. But a diary in this life is one of the only ways in which a man can blow off steam, and so it is that Scott's book accentuates the depression which used to come over him sometimes.

We have seen the importance which must attach to the proper record of improvements, weights and methods of each and every expedition. We have seen how Scott took the system developed by the Arctic Explorers at the point of development to which it had been brought by Nansen, and applied it for the first time to Antarctic sledge travelling. Scott's Voyage of the Discovery gives a vivid picture of mistakes rectified, and of improvements of every kind. Shackleton applied the knowledge they gained in his first expedition, Scott in this, his second and last. On the whole I believe this expedition was the best equipped there has ever been, when the double purpose, exploratory and scientific, for which it was organized, is taken into consideration. It is comparatively easy to put all your eggs into one basket, to organize your material and to equip and choose your men entirely for one object, whether it be the attainment of the Pole, or the running of a perfect series of scientific observations.

Your difficulties increase many-fold directly you combine the one with the other, as was done in this case. Neither Scott nor the men with him would have gone for the Pole alone. Yet they considered the Pole to be an achievement worthy of a great attempt, and "We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint...."

It is, it must be, of the first importance that a system, I will not say perfected, but developed, to a pitch of high excellence at such a cost should be handed down as completely as possible to those who are to follow. I want to so tell this story that the leader of some future Antarctic expedition, perhaps more than one, will be able to take it up and say: "I have here the material from which I can order the articles and quant.i.ties which will be wanted for so many men for such and such a time; I have also a record of how this material was used by Scott, of the plans of his journeys and how his plans worked out, and of the improvements which his parties were able to make on the spot or suggest for the future. I don't agree with such and such, but this is a foundation and will save me many months of work in preparation, and give me useful knowledge for the actual work of my expedition." If this book can guide the future explorer by the light of the past, it will not have been written in vain.

But this was not my main object in writing this book. When I undertook in 1913 to write, for the Antarctic Committee, an Official Narrative on condition that I was given a free hand, what I wanted to do above all things was to show what work was done; who did it; to whom the credit of the work was due; who took the responsibility; who did the hard sledging; and who pulled us through that last and most ghastly year when two parties were adrift, and G.o.d only knew what was best to be done; when, had things gone on much longer, men would undoubtedly have gone mad.

There is no record of these things, though perhaps the world thinks there is. Generally as a mere follower, without much responsibility, and often scared out of my wits, I was in the thick of it all, and I know.

Unfortunately I could not reconcile a sincere personal confession with the decorous obliquity of an Official Narrative; and I found that I had put the Antarctic Committee in a difficulty from which I could rescue them only by taking the book off their hands; for it was clear that what I had written was not what is expected from a Committee, even though no member may disapprove of a word of it. A proper Official Narrative presented itself to our imaginations and sense of propriety as a quarto volume, uniform with the scientific reports, dustily invisible on Museum shelves, and replete with--in the words of my Commission--"times of starting, hours of march, ground and weather conditions," not very useful as material for future Antarcticists, and in no wise effecting any catharsis of the writer's conscience. I could not pretend that I had fulfilled these conditions; and so I decided to take the undivided responsibility on my own shoulders. None the less the Committee, having given me access to its information, is ent.i.tled to all the credit of a formal Official Narrative, without the least responsibility for the pa.s.sages which I have studied to make as personal in style as possible, so that no greater authority may be attached to them than I deserve.

I need hardly add that the nine years' delay in the appearance of my book was caused by the war. Before I had recovered from the heavy overdraft made on my strength by the expedition I found myself in Flanders looking after a fleet of armoured cars. A war is like the Antarctic in one respect. There is no getting out of it with honour as long as you can put one foot before the other. I came back badly invalided; and the book had to wait accordingly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM NEW ZEALAND TO THE SOUTH POLE--Apsley Cherry-Garrard, del.--Emery Walker Ltd., Collotypers.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, Introduction.

[2] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, vol. i. p. 23.

[3] Ibid. p. 28.

[4] Cook, _A Voyage towards the South Pole_, vol. i. p. 268.

[5] Ibid. p. 275.

[6] Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. i. p. 9.

[7] Ibid. p. 14.

[8] Ross, _Voyage to the Southern Seas_, vol. i. p. 117.

[9] Ross, _Voyage to the Southern Seas_, vol. i. pp. 216-218.

[10] Ross, _Voyage to the Southern Seas_, vol. i. pp. 244-245.

[11] Leonard Huxley, _Life of Sir J. D. Hooker_, vol. ii. p. 443.

[12] Ibid. p. 441.

[13] Nansen, _Farthest North_, vol. i. p. 52.