CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RETURN MARCH
Our homeward marches are a tale of sufferings from hunger and dysentery, of struggles against blizzards and crevasses and bad surfaces. One desire drove us on from depot to depot, and that was our supreme craving for food.
All of us had tragic dreams of getting food to eat, but rarely did we have the satisfaction of dreaming that we were actually eating. I did, however, once have a dream that I was eating bread and butter. Conscience is said to make men cowardly, and I am sure that it is as true to say that hunger makes them very peevish and irritable. We looked at each other as we ate our scanty meals, and felt a distinct grievance if one man managed to make his ration last longer than the rest of us. Sometimes we did our best to save a bit of biscuit for the next meal, but the problem whether it was better to eat the food at once or to keep a fragment to nibble afterwards was never solved.
At the start circumstances may be said to have favoured us, for we picked up the depot which we had ventured to leave on the great white plain, and the wind was so strongly behind that we were able to put the sail on the sledge.
In five days we had knocked off some eighty-six geographical miles of those which separated us from our home, and as we were left with only six days' biscuit on short ration and had to go 120 more miles before we reached our next depot, we decided to cut down our food by another biscuit.
A following wind continued to help us, and the sail was of such assistance that on one day we made a record of twenty-six and a half miles, and beat it on the next by doing twenty-nine miles.
But although to beat records is pleasant under any circumstances, my own pleasure was rather diminished by the facts that my heels were frost-bitten and cracked, and that there were also cracks under some of my toes.
We had, however, struggled on until we were within eight and a half miles of our depot, though had we been hindered instead of helped by the strong blizzard wind, it is no exaggeration to say that our chance of escaping starvation would have been inexpressibly small.
On the 20th we reached our depot at 12.30 P.M. with sore and aching bodies, and after a struggle against countless difficulties. For two hours we descended a snow-slope, with heavy sastrugi, and then we struck half a mile of badly crevassed névé. After that we got on to blue slippery ice, where we could obtain no foothold, and to add to the discomfort and danger of the situation, a gale was blowing which swept the sledge sideways and knocked us off our feet.
All of us had heavy falls, and I had two very heavy ones which shook me severely. On several occasions one or more of us lost our footing and were swept by the wind down the ice-slope, only with the greatest difficulty getting back to our sledge and companions.
Bad, however, as that day was, and perilous as was our position, we had said a glad farewell to that awful plateau, and were on our way down the glacier.
On the next day I harnessed up for a while, but so bruised and battered was I by my falls that I soon had to give up pulling and to content myself by walking by the sledge. Fortunately we had a fair wind and a downhill course, so my inability to pull was not an important matter.
The 24th saw us with only two days' food left and one day's biscuit on much reduced ration, and we had to cover forty miles of crevasses before we could reach our next depot. Crevassed ice still added terribly to our troubles, but though weak I had almost recovered from my falls.
Continually we seemed to be fighting for the same thing, to struggle on from one depot to the next to save ourselves from starvation. A lunch of a cup of tea, two biscuits, and two spoonsful of cheese does not make one exactly buoyant to attack the march of the afternoon, but by the 25th we were reduced to this, and at night the food, with the exception of one meal, was completely gone.
No biscuit was left, and all we had to sustain us was cocoa, tea, salt and pepper, and very little of these. On that night we were very tired indeed, and we knew that it was absolutely necessary for us to reach our depot on the following day. By 7 A.M. on the 26th we came to the end of all our provisions except a little tea and cocoa, and that day and the following one can never be erased from our memories, for they were the hardest and the most trying that any of us had ever spent in our lives.
From 7 A.M. on the 26th till 2 P.M. on the 27th we did sixteen miles over the worst surfaces and most dangerous crevasses we had encountered, only stopping for tea and cocoa till they were finished, and marching twenty hours at a stretch through snow 10 to 18 in. thick as a rule, with sometimes 2½ ft. of it. Often and often we fell into hidden crevasses, and were only saved by each other and by our harness. No words of mine could bring before you the mental and physical strain of those forty-eight hours. I will only say that had not an all-merciful Providence guided our steps we could never have arrived safely at the depot.
When we started at 7 A.M. on the 26th we had no biscuit left, and with only one pannikin of hoosh, mostly pony-maize, and one of tea, we marched till noon. Then we had another pannikin of tea and one ounce of chocolate and marched till 4.45 P.M. Having no food, we then had another pannikin of tea and marched until 10 P.M., when we had one small pannikin of cocoa. On again after that until 2 A.M., when we were utterly played out and slept until 8 A.M. Then we had a pannikin of cocoa and marched until 1 P.M., when we camped about half a mile from our depot.
Both Adams and Wild had fallen exhausted in their harness, but had recovered and gone on again. Marshall went on to the depot for food, and at 2 P.M. we got the meal we so desperately needed. And after this very near call we turned in and slept, thankful indeed to have escaped so far with our lives.