The Worst Journey in the World Part 48

G.o.d sent His daylight to scatter the nightmares of the darkness. I can remember now the joy of an August day when the sun looked over the rim of the Barne Glacier, and my shadow lay clear-cut upon the snow. It was wonderful what a friendly thing that ice-slope became. We put the first trace upon the sunshine recorder; there was talk of expeditions to Cape Royds and Hut Point, and survey parties; and we ate our luncheon by the daylight which shone through the newly cleared window.

The coming Search Journey was organized to reach the Upper Glacier Depot, and the plans were modelled upon the Polar Journey of the year before.

But now we had no extensive depots on the Barrier. It was intended that the dogs should run two trips out to Corner Camp during this spring. It was hoped that two parties of four men each might be able to ascend the Beardmore, one of them remaining about half-way up and doing geological and other scientific work while the other went up to the top.

In our inmost thoughts we were full of doubts and fears. "I had a long talk with Lashly, who asked me what I candidly thought had happened to the Southern Party. I told him a creva.s.se. He says he does not think so: he thinks it is scurvy. Talking about creva.s.ses he says that, on the return of the Second Return Party, they came right over the ice-falls south of Mount Darwin,--descending about 2000 feet into a great valley, down which they travelled towards the west, and so to the Upper Glacier Depot. I believe Scott told Evans (Lieut.) that he meant to come back this same way."

"Then the stuff they got into above the Cloudmaker must have been horrible. 'Why, there are places there you could put St. Paul's into, and that's no exaggeration, neither,' and they spent two nights in it. All the way down to the Gateway he says there were creva.s.ses, great big fellows thirty feet across, which we of the First Return Party had crossed both going and coming back and which we never saw. But then much of the snow had gone and they were visible. Lieut. Evans was very badly s...o...b..ind most of this time. Then outside the Gateway, on the Barrier, they crossed many creva.s.ses, and some had fallen in where we had pa.s.sed over them."

"This makes one think. Is the state of affairs in which we found the glacier an extraordinary one, the snow being a special phenomenon due to that great blizzard and snowfall? Are we going to find blue ice this year where we found thick soft snow last? Well! I have got a regular bad needle again, just as I have had before. But somehow the needle has always worked off when we get right into it. What a blessing it is that things are seldom as bad in the reality as you expect they are going to be in your imagination: though I must say the Winter Journey was worse even than I had imagined. I remember that this time last year the thought of the Beardmore was very terrible: but the reality was never very bad."

"Lashly thinks it would be practically impossible for five men to disappear down a creva.s.se. Where three men got through (and he said it would be impossible to get worse stuff than they came through), five men would be still better off. This is not my view, however. I think that the extra weight of one man might make all the difference in crossing a big creva.s.se: and if several men fell through one of those great bridges when sledge and men were all on it, I do not think the bridge would hold the sledge."[286]

Several trips were made to Cape Royds over the Barne Glacier, and then by portaging over the rocks to Shackleton's old hut. The sea was open here, except for small niches of ice, and the hut and the cape were comparatively free from drifts; probably the open water had swallowed the drifting snow. Not so Hut Point, which was surrounded by huge drifts: the verandah which we had built up as a stable was filled from floor to roof: there was no ice-foot to be seen, only a long snow-slope from the door to the sea-level. The hut itself, when we had dug our way into it, was clear. We took down stores for the Search Journey, and brought back with us the only surviving sledge-meter.

These instruments, which indicate by a clockwork arrangement the distance travelled in miles and yards, are actuated by a wheel which runs behind the sledge. They are of the greatest possible use, especially when sledging out of sight of land on the Barrier or Plateau, and we bitterly regretted that we had no more. They do not have an easy time on a glacier, and we lost the mechanism of one of our three Polar Journey meters when on the Beardmore. Dog-driving is hard on them; and pony-driving when the ponies are like Christopher plays the very deuce.

Anyway we found we had only one left for this year, and this was more or less a dud. It was mended so far as possible but was never really reliable, and latterly was useless. A lot of trouble was taken by Lashly to make another with a bicycle wheel from one of our experimental trucks, the revolutions of which were marked on a counter which was almost exactly similar to one of our anemometer registers. A bicycle wheel of course stood much higher than our proper sledge-meters, and a difficulty rose in fixing it to the sledge so as to prevent its wobbling and at the same time allow it the necessary amount of play.

Meanwhile the mules were being brought on in condition. With daylight and improved weather they were exercised with loaded sledges on the sea-ice which still remained in South Bay. They went like lambs, and were evidently used to the work. Gulab was a troublesome little animal: he had no objection to pulling a sledge, but was just ultra-timid. Again and again he was got into position for having his traces. .h.i.tched on, and each time some little thing, the flapping of a mitt, the touch of the trace, or the feel of the bow of the sledge, frightened him and he was off, and the same performance had to be repeated. Once harnessed he was very good.

The breast harness sent down for them by the Indian Government was used: it was excellent; though Oates, I believe, had an idea that collars were better. However, we had not got the collars. The mules themselves looked very fit and strong: our only doubt was whether their small hoofs would sink into soft snow even farther than the ponies had done.

No record of this expedition would be complete without some mention of the cases of fire which occurred. The first was in the lazarette of the ship on the voyage to Cape Town: it was caused by an overturned lamp and easily extinguished. The second was during our first winter in the Antarctic, when there was a fire in the motor shed, which was formed by full petrol cases built up round the motors, and roofed with a tarpaulin.

This threatened to be more serious, but was also put out without much difficulty. The third and fourth cases were during the winter which had just pa.s.sed, and were both inside Winter Quarters.

Wright wanted a lamp to heat a shed which he was building out of cases and tarpaulins for certain of his work. He brought a lamp (not a primus) into the hut, and tried to make it work. He spent some time in the morning on this, and after lunch Nelson joined him. The lamp was fitted with an indicator to show the pressure obtained by pumping. Nelson was pumping, kneeling at the end of the table next the bulkhead which divided the officers' and men's quarters: his head was level with the lamp, and the indicator was not showing a high pressure. Wright was standing close by. Suddenly the lamp burst, a rent three inches long appearing in the join where the bottom of the oil reservoir is fitted to the rest of the bowl. Twenty places were alight immediately, clothing, bedding, papers and patches of burning oil were all over the table and floor. Luckily everybody was in the hut, for it was blowing a blizzard and minus twenty outside. They were very quick, and every outbreak was stopped.

On September 5 it was blowing as if it would rip your wind-clothes off you. We were bagging pemmican in the hut when some one said, "Can you smell burning?" At first we could not see anything wrong, and Gran said it must be some brown paper he had burnt; but after three or four minutes, looking upwards, we saw that the top of the chimney piping was red hot where it went out through the roof, as was also a large ventilator trap which entered the flue at this point. We put salt down from outside, and the fire seemed to die down, but shortly afterwards the ventilator trap fell on to the table, leaving a cake of burning soot exposed. This luckily did not fall, and we raked it down into buckets.

About a quarter of an hour afterwards all the chimney started blazing again, the flames shooting up into the blizzard outside. We got this out by pushing snow in at the top, and holding baths and buckets below to catch the debris. We then did what we ought to have done at the beginning of the winter--took the piping down and cleaned it all out.

Our last fire was a little business. Debenham and I were at Hut Point. I noticed that the place was full of smoke, which was quite usual with a blubber fire, but afterwards we found that the old hut was alight between the two roofs. The inner roof was too shaky to allow one to walk on it, and so, at Debenham's suggestion, we bent a tube which was lying about and syphoned some water up with complete success. Our more usual fire extinguishers were Minimax, and they left nothing to be desired: indeed, all they left were the acid stains on the material touched.

From such grim considerations it is a pleasure to turn to the out-of-door life we now led. Emperor penguins began to visit us in companies up to forty in number: probably they were birds whose maternal or paternal instincts had been thwarted at Cape Crozier and had now taken to a vagrant life. They suffered, I am afraid, from the loose dogs, and on one occasion Debenham was out on the sea-ice with a team of those dogs of ours which were useless for serious sledging. He had taken them in hand and formed a team which was very creditable to him, if not to themselves.

On this occasion he had managed with great difficulty to restrain them from joining a company of Emperors. The dogs were frantic, the Emperors undisturbed. Unable to go himself, one dog called Little Ginger unselfishly bit through the harness which restrained two of his companions, and Debenham, helplessly holding the straining sledge, could only witness the slaughter, which followed.

The first skua gull arrived on October 24, and we knew they would soon breed on any level gravel or rock free from snow; and we should see the Antarctic petrels again, and perhaps a rare snowy petrel; and the first whales would be finding their way into McMurdo Sound. Also the Weddells, the common coastal seals of the Antarctic, were now, in the beginning of October, leaving the open water and lying out on the ice. They were nearly all females, and getting ready to give birth to their young.

The Weddell seal is black on top, and splashed with silver in other places. He measures up to 10 feet from nose to tail, eats fish, is corpulent and hulking. He sometimes carries four inches of blubber. On the ice he is one of the most sluggish of G.o.d's creatures, he sleeps continually, digests huge meals, and grunts, gurgles, pipes, trills and whistles in the most engaging way. In the sea he is transformed into one of the most elastic and lithe of beasts, catching his fish and swallowing them whole. As you stand over his blow-hole his head appears, and he snorts at you with surprise but no fear, opening and shutting his nostrils the while as he takes in a supply of fresh air. It is clear that they travel for many miles beneath the ice, and I expect they find their way from air-hole to air-hole by listening to the noise made by other seals. Some of the air-holes are exit and entrance holes as well, and I found at least one seal which appeared to have died owing to its opening freezing up. They may be heard at times grinding these holes open with their teeth (Ponting took some patient cinematographs showing the process of sawing the openings to these wells) and their teeth are naturally much worn by the time they become old. Wilson states that they are liable to kidney trouble: their skin is often irritable, which may be due to the drying salt from the sea; and I have seen one seal which was covered with a suppurating rash. Their spleens are sometimes enormously enlarged when they first come out of the sea on to the ice, which is interesting because no one seems to know much about spleens. Speculation was caused amongst us by the fact that some of these air-holes had as it were a trap-door above them. One day I was on the ice-foot at Cape Evans at a time when North Bay was frozen over with about an inch or more of ice. A seal suddenly poked his nose up through this ice to get air, and when he disappeared a slab which had been raised by his head fell back into this trap position. Clearly this was the origin of the door.

Weddell seals and the Hut Point life are inextricably mixed up in my recollections of October. Atkinson, Debenham, Dimitri and I went down to Hut Point on the 12th, with the two dog-teams. We were to run two depots out on to the Barrier, and Debenham, whose leg prevented his further sledging, was to do geological work and a plane table survey. Those of us who had borne the brunt of the travelling of the two previous sledge seasons were sick of sledging. For my own part I confess I viewed the whole proceedings with distaste, and I have no doubt the others did too; but the job had to be done if possible, and there was no good in saying we were sick of it. From beginning to end of this year men not only laboured willingly, but put their hearts and souls into the work. To have to do another three months' journey seemed bad enough, and to leave our comfortable Winter Quarters three weeks before we started on that journey was an additional irritation. We ran down in surface drift: it was thick to the south, the wind bit our faces and hands; we could see nothing by the time we got in, and the snow was falling heavily. The stable was full of beastly snow, the hut was cold and cheerless, and there was no blubber for the stove. And if we had only taken the ship and gone home when the period for which we had joined was pa.s.sed, we might have been in London for the last six months!

But then the snow stopped, the wind went down, and the mountain tops appeared in all their glorious beauty. We were in the middle of a perfect summer afternoon, with a warm sun beating on the rocks as we walked round to Pram Point. There were many seals here already, and it was clear that the place would form a jolly nursery this year, for there must have been a lot of movement on the Barrier and the sea-ice was seamed with pressure ridges up to twenty feet in height. The hollows were buckled until the sea water came up and formed frozen ponds which would thaw later into lovely baths. Sheltered from the wind the children could chase their ridiculous tails to their hearts' content: their mothers would lie and sleep, awakening every now and then to scratch themselves with their long finger-nails. Not quite yet, but they were not far away: Lappy, one of our dogs who always looked more like a spaniel than anything else, heard one under the ice and started to burrow down to him!

Nearly three weeks later I paid several more visits to this delightful place. It was thick with seals, big seals and little seals, hairy seals and woolly seals: every day added appreciably to the number of babies, and to the baaings and bleatings which made the place sound like a great sheepfold. In every case where I approached, the mothers opened their mouths and bellowed at me to keep away, but they did not come for me though I actually stroked one baby. Often when the mother bellowed the little one would also open his mouth, producing just the ghost of a bellow: not because he seemed afraid of us, but rather because he thought it was the right thing to do: as indeed it probably was. One old cow was marked with hoops all round her body, like an advertis.e.m.e.nt of Michelin tyres: only the hoops were but an inch apart from one another, and seemed to be formed by darker and longer bands of hair: probably something to do with the summer moult. Two cows, which scrambled out of the same hole one after the other, were fighting, the hinder one biting the other savagely as she made an ungainly entrance. The first was not in calf, the aggressor, however, was: this may have had something to do with it. They were both much cut about and bleeding.

A seal is never so pretty as when he is a baby. With his grey woolly coat, which he keeps for a fortnight, his comparatively long flippers and tail, and his big dark eyes, he looks very clean and p.u.s.s.y-like. I watched one running round and round after his tail, putting his flipper under his head as a pillow, and scratching himself, seemingly as happy as possible: yet it was pretty cold with some wind.

Little is known of the lighter side of a Weddell's life. It seems probable that their courtship is a ponderous affair. About October 26 Atkinson found an embryo of about a fortnight old, which is an interesting stage, and this was preserved with many others we found, but all of them were too old to be of any real value. I think there is a good deal of variation in the size of the calves at birth. There is certainly much difference between the care of individual mothers, some of which are most concerned when you approach, while others take little notice or lop away from you, leaving their calf to look after itself, or to find another mother. Sometimes they are none too careful not to roll or lie on their calves.

One afternoon I drove a bull seal towards a cow with a calf. The cow went for him bald-headed, with open mouth, bellowing and most disturbed. The bull defended himself as best he might but absolutely refused to take the offensive. The calf imitated his mother as best he could.

Meanwhile Atkinson and Dimitri took some mule-fodder and dog-biscuit to a point twelve miles south of Corner Camp. They started on October 14 with the two dog-teams and found a most terrible surface on the Barrier, the sledges sometimes sinking as far as the 'fore-and-afters'; the minimum temperatures the first two nights were -39 and -25; strong blizzard at Corner Camp; a lie-up for a day and a half, before they could push on in wind and drift and lay the depot. The dogs ran back from Corner Camp to Hut Point on October 19, a distance of thirty miles. Three miles from Corner Camp three dogs of Atkinson's team fell into a creva.s.se, one of them falling right down to the length of his harness. The rest of the team, however, pulled on, and dragged the three dogs out as they went.

Atkinson lost his driving-stick, which was left standing in the snow and served to mark a place to be avoided. Altogether a rather lucky escape: two men out alone with two dog-teams are somewhat helpless in case of emergency.

On October 25 Dimitri and I started to take a further depot out to Corner Camp with the two dog-teams, pulling about 600 lbs. each. We found a much better surface than that experienced by Atkinson; in places really smooth and hard. "It is good to be out again in such weather, and it has been a very pleasant day." The minimum was only -24 that night, and we reached Corner Camp on the afternoon of the next day, following the old tracks where possible, and halting occasionally to hunt when we lost them. "Here we made the depot and the dogs had a rest of 3 hours, and two biscuits.

It was quaint to see them waiting for more food, for they knew they had not had their full whack."[287]

There was plenty of evidence that the Barrier had moved a long way during the last year. It had buckled up the sea-ice at Pram Point; there were at least three new and well-marked undulations before reaching Corner Camp; and the camp itself had moved visibly, judged by the bearings and sketches we possessed. I believe the annual movement had not been less than half a mile.

Corner Camp is a well-known trap for blizzards on the line of their exit at Cape Crozier, and it was clouding up, the barometer falling, and the temperature rising rapidly. "So we decided to come back some way, and have in the end come right back to the Biscuit Depot, since it looked very threatening to the east. Here the temperature is lower (-15) and it is clearing. Ross Island has been largely obscured, but the clouds are opening on Terror. We had a very good run and the dogs pulled splendidly, making light work of it: 29 miles for the day, half of it with loaded sledges! Lappy's feet are bleeding a good bit, owing to the snow balling in between his toes where the hair is unusually long. Bullet, who is fat and did not pull, celebrated his arrival in camp by going for Bielchik who had pulled splendidly all day! There is much mirage, and Observation Hill and Castle Rock are reversed."[288] We reached Hut Point the next day. Lappy's feet were still bad, and Dimitri wrapped him in his windproof blouse and strapped him on to the sledge. All went well until we got on to the sea-ice, when Lappy escaped and arrived an easy first.

Dog-driving is the devil! Before I started, my language would not have shamed a Sunday School, and now--if it were not Sunday I would tell you more about it. It takes all kinds to make a world and a dog-team. We had aristocrats like Osman, and Bolsheviks like Krisravitza, and lunatics like Hol-hol. The present-day employer of labour might stand amazed when he saw a crowd of prospective workmen go mad with joy at the sight of their driver approaching them with a harness in his hands. The most ardent trade unionist might boil with rage at the sight of eleven or thirteen huskies dragging a heavy load, including their idle master, over the floe with every appearance of intense joy. But truth to tell there were signs that they were getting rather sick of it, and within a few days we were to learn that dogs can chuck their paws in as well as many another. They had their king, of course: Osman was that. They combined readily and with immense effect against any companion who did not pull his weight, or against one who pulled too much. Dyk was unpopular among them, for when the team of which he was a member was halted he constantly whined and tugged at his harness in his eagerness to go on: this did not allow the rest of the team to rest, and they were justifiably resentful. Sometimes a team got a down upon a dog without our being able to discover their doggy reason. In any case we had to watch carefully to prevent them carrying out their intentions, their method of punishment always being the same and ending, if unchecked, in what they probably called justice, and we called murder.

I have referred to the crusts on the Barrier, where the snow lies in layers with an air-s.p.a.ce, perhaps a quarter of an inch, or more, between them. These will subside as you pa.s.s over them, giving the inexperienced polar traveller some nasty moments until he learns that they are not creva.s.ses. But the dogs thought they were rabbits, and pounced, time after time. There was a little dog called Mukaka, who got dragged under the sledge in one of the mad penguin rushes the dog-teams made when we were landing stores from the Terra Nova: his back was hurt and afterwards he died. "He is paired with a fat, lazy and very greedy black dog, Noogis by name, and in every march this sprightly little Mukaka will once or twice notice that Noogis is not pulling and will jump over the trace, bite Noogis like a snap, and be back again in his own place before the fat dog knows what has happened."[289]

Then there was Stareek (which is the Russian for old man, starouka being old woman). "He is quite a ridiculous 'old man,' and quite the nicest, quietest, cleverest old dog I have ever come across. He looks in face as though he knew all the wickedness of all the world and all its cares, and as if he were bored to death by them."[290] He was the leader of Wilson's team on the Depot Journey, but decided that he was not going out again.

Thereafter when he thought there was no one looking he walked naturally; but if he saw you looking at him he immediately had a frost-bitten paw, limped painfully over the snow, and looked so pitiful that only brutes like us could think of putting him to pull a sledge. We tried but he refused to work, and his final victory was complete.

One more story: Dimitri is telling us how a "funny old Stareek" at Sydney came and objected to his treatment of the dogs (which were more than half wolves and would eat you without provocation). "He says to me, 'You not whip'--I say, 'What ho!' He go and fetch Mr. Meares--he try put me in choky. Then he go to Anton--give Anton cigarette and match--he say--'How old that horse?' pointing to Hackenschmidt--Anton say, very young--he not believe--he go try see Hackenschmidt's teeth--and old Starouka too--and Hackenschmidt he draw back and he rush forward and bite old Stareek twice, and he fall backwards over case--and ole woman pick him up. He very white beard which went so--I not see him again."

FOOTNOTES:

[286] My own diary.

[287] My own diary.

[288] My own diary.

[289] Wilson's Journal, _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 616.

[290] Ibid.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SEARCH JOURNEY

From my own diary

Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.

SPENSER, _The Faerie Queen._

_October 28. Hut Point._ A beautiful day. We finished digging out the stable for the mules this morning and brought in some blubber this afternoon. The Bluff has its cap on, but otherwise the sky is nearly clear: there is a little c.u.mulus between White Island and the Bluff, the first I have seen this year on the Barrier. It is most noticeable how much snow has disappeared off the rocks and shingle here.

_October 29. Hut Point._ The mule party, under Wright, consisting of Gran, Nelson, Crean, Hooper, Williamson, Keohane and Lashly, left Cape Evans at 10.30 and arrived here at 5 P.M. after a good march in perfect weather. They leave Debenham and Archer at the hut, and I am afraid it will be dull work for them the next three months. Archer turned out early and made some cakes which they have brought with them. They camped for lunch seven miles from Cape Evans.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MULE PARTY LEAVES CAPE EVANS--October 29, 1912]