FOOTNOTES:
[280] My own diary.
[281] My own diary.
[282] My own diary.
[283] See Amundsen, The South Pole, vol. i. p. 264.
[284] Ibid. vol. i. p. 119.
[285] Scott, Voyage of the Discovery, vol. i. pp. 480-487.
CHAPTER XV
Another Spring
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath;
Lo! for there among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.
The flowers were of snow, the rivers of ice, and if Stevenson had been to the Antarctic he would have made them so.
God 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 Depôt, and the plans were modelled upon the Polar Journey of the year before. But now we had no extensive depôts 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 crevasse. He says he does not think so: he thinks it is scurvy. Talking about crevasses 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 Depôt. 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 crevasses, 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 snowblind most of this time. Then outside the Gateway, on the Barrier, they crossed many crevasses, and some had fallen in where we had passed 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 crevasse. 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 crevasse: 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 hitched 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 passed, 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 débris. 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 God'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 depôts 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 passed, 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 advertisement 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 pussy-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 depôt. 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 crevasse, 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 depôt 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 depôt and the dogs had a rest of 3½ 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 Depôt, 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-space, perhaps a quarter of an inch, or more, between them. These will subside as you pass over them, giving the inexperienced polar traveller some nasty moments until he learns that they are not crevasses. 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 Depôt 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
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 cumulus 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.
The Mule Party Leaves Cape Evans—October 29, 1912
This is the start of the Search Journey. Everything which forethought can do has been done, and to a point twelve miles south of Corner Camp the mules will be travelling light owing to the depôts which have been laid. The barometer has been falling the last few days and is now low, while the Bluff is overcast. Yet it does not look like blizzard to come. Two Adélie penguins, the first, came to Cape Evans yesterday, and a skua was seen there on the 24th: so summer is really here.
October 30. Hut Point. It is now 8 p.m., and the mules are just off, looking very fit, keeping well together, and giving no trouble at the start. Their leaders turned in this afternoon, and to-night begins the new routine of night marching, just the same as last year. It did look thick on the Barrier this afternoon, and it was quite a question whether it was advisable for them to start. But it is rolling away now, being apparently only fog, which is now disappearing before some wind, or perhaps because the sun is losing its power. I think they will have a good march.
November 2, 5 a.m. Biscuit Depôt. Atkinson, Dimitri and I, with two dog-teams, left Hut Point last night at 8.30. We have had a coldish night's run, -21° when we left after lunch, -17° now. The surface was very heavy for the dogs, there being a soft coating of snow over everything since we last came this way, due no doubt to the foggy days we have been having lately. The sledge-meter makes it nearly 16 miles.
The mule party has two days' start on us, and their programme is to do twelve miles a day to One Ton Depôt. Their tracks are fairly clear, but there has been some drift from the east since they passed. We picked up our cairns well. We are pretty wet, having been running nearly all the way.
November 3. Early morning. 14½ miles. We are here at Corner Camp, but not without a struggle. We left the Biscuit Depôt at 6.30 p.m. yesterday, and it is now 4 a.m. The last six miles took us four hours, which is very bad going for dogs, and we have all been running most of the way. The surface was very bad, crusty and also soft: it was blowing with some low drift, and overcast and snowing. We followed the drifted-up mule tracks with difficulty and are lucky to have got so far. The temperature has been a constant zero.
There is a note here from Wright about the mules, which left here last night. They only saw two small crevasses on the way, but Khan Sahib got into the tide-crack at the edge of the Barrier, and had to be hauled out with a rope. The mules are going fast over the first part of the day, but show a tendency to stop towards the end: they keep well together except Khan Sahib, who is a slower mule than the others. It is now blowing with some drift, but nothing bad, and beyond the Bluff it seems to be clear. We are all pretty tired.
November 4. Early morning. Well! this has been a disappointing day, but we must hope that all will turn out well. We turned out at 2 a.m. yesterday and then it was clearing all round, a mild blizzard having been blowing since we camped. We started at five in some wind and low drift. It was good travelling weather, and except for the first three miles the surface has been fair to good, and the last part very good. Yet the dogs could not manage their load, which according to programme should go up a further 150 lbs. each team here at Dimitri Depôt. One of our dogs, Kusoi, gave out, but we managed to get him along tied to the stern of the sledge, because the team behind tried to get at him and he realized he had better mend his ways. We camped for lunch when Tresor also was pretty well done. We were then on a very good surface, but were often pushing the sledge to get it along. The mule party were gone when we started again, and probably did not see us. We came on to the depôt, but we cannot hope to get along far on bad surfaces if we cannot get along on good ones. The note left by Wright states that their sledge-meter has proved useless, and this leaves all three parties of us with only one, which is not very reliable now.
So it has been decided that the dogs must return from 80° 30´, or 81° at the farthest, and instead of four mules, as was intended, going on from there, five must go on instead. The dogs can therefore now leave behind much of their own weights and take on the mules' weights instead. And this is the part where the mules' weights are so heavy. Perhaps the new scheme is the best, but it puts everything on the mules from 80° 30´: if they will do it all is well: if they won't we have nothing to fall back on.
Midnight, November 4-5. It has been blowing and drifting all day. We turned out again at mid-day on the 4th, and re-made the depôt with what we were to leave owing to the new programme. This is all rather sad, but it can't be helped. It was then blowing a summer blizzard, and we were getting frost-bitten when we started, following the mule tracks. There were plenty of cairns for us to pick up, and with the lighter loads and a very good surface we came along much better. Lunching at eight miles we arrived just as the mule party had finished their hoosh preparatory to starting, and it has been decided that the mules are not to go on to-night, but we will all start marching together to-morrow.
The news from this party is on the whole good, not the least good being that the sledge-meter is working again, though not very reliably. They are marching well, and at a great pace, except for Khan Sahib. Gulab, however, is terribly chafed both by his collar and by his breast harness, both of which have been tried. He has a great raw place where this fits on one side, and is chafed, but not so badly, on the other side. Lal Khan is pulling well, but is eating very little. Pyaree is doing very well, but has some difficulty in lifting her leg when in soft snow. Abdullah seems to be considered the best mule at present. On the whole good hearing.
Wright's sleeping-bag is bad, letting in light through cracks in a good many places. But he makes very little of it and does not seem to be cold—saying it is good ventilation. The mule cloths, which have a rough lining to their outside canvas, are collecting a lot of snow, and all the mules are matted with cakes of snow. They are terrible rope-eaters, cloth-eaters, anything to eat, though they are not hungry. And they have even learnt to pull their picketing buckles undone, and go walking about the camp. Indeed Nelson says that the only time when Khan Sahib does not cast himself adrift is when he is ready to start on the march.
November 6. Early morning. We had a really good lie-in yesterday, and after the hard slogging with the dogs during the last few days I for one was very glad of it. We came on behind, and in sight of the mules this last march, and the change in the dogs was wonderful. Where it had been a job to urge them on over quite as good a surface yesterday, to-day for some time we could not get off the sledge except for short runs: although we had taken 312 lbs. weight off the mules and loaded it on to the dogs.
We had a most glorious night for marching, and it is now bright sunlight, and the animals' fur is quite warm where the sun strikes it. We have just had a bit of a fight over the dog-food, Vaida going for Dyk, and now the others are somewhat excited, and there are constant growlings and murmurings.
The camp makes more of a mark than last year, for the mules are dark while the ponies were white or grey, and the cloths are brown instead of light green. The consequence is that the camp shows up from a long distance off. We are building cairns at regular distances, and there should be no difficulty in keeping on the course in fair weather at any rate. Now in the land of big sastrugi: Erebus is beginning to look small, but we could see an unusually big smoke from the crater all day.
November 7. Early morning. Not an easy day. It was -9° and overcast when we turned out, and the wind was then dying down, but it had been blowing up to force 5, with surface drift during the day. We started in a bad light and the surface, which was the usual hard surface common here, with big sastrugi, was covered by a thin layer of crystals which were then falling. This naturally made it very much harder pulling: we with the dogs have been running nearly all the twelve miles, and I for one am tired. At lunch Atkinson thought he saw a tent away to our right,—the very thought of it came as a shock,—but it proved to be a false alarm. We have been keeping a sharp look-out for the gear which was left about this part by the Last Return Party, but have seen no sign of it.
It is now -14°, but the sun is shining brightly in a clear sky, and it feels beautifully warm. It seems a very regular thing for the sky to cloud over as the sun gets low towards nightfall—and directly the sun begins to rise again the clouds disappear in a most wonderful way.
November 8. Early morning. Last night's twelve miles was quite cold for the time of year, being -23° at lunch and now -18°. But it is calm, with bright sun, and this temperature feels warm. However, there are some frost-bites as a result, both Nelson and Hooper having swollen faces. The same powder and crystals have been on the surface, but we have carried the good Bluff surface so far, being now four miles beyond Bluff Depôt. This is fortunate, and to the best of my recollection we were already getting on to a soft surface at this point last summer. If so there must have been more wind here this year than last, which, according to the winter we have had, seems probable.
We made up the Bluff Depôt after lunch, putting up a new flag and building up the cairn, leaving two cases of dog-biscuit for the returning dog-teams. It is curious that the drift to leeward of the cairn, that is N.N.E., was quite soft, the snow all round and the drifts on either side being hard—exceptionally hard in fact. Why this drift should remain soft when a drift in the same place is usually hard is difficult to explain. All is happy in the mule camp. They have given Lal a drink of water and he has started to eat, which is good news. Some of the mules seem snow-blind, and they are now all wearing their blinkers. I have just heard that Gran swung the thermometer at four this morning and found it -29°. Nelson's face is a sight—his nose a mere swollen lump, frost-bitten cheeks, and his goggles have frosted him where the rims touched his face. Poor Marie!
November 9. Early morning. Twelve more miles to the good, and we must consider ourselves fortunate in still carrying on the same good surface, which is almost if not quite as good as that of yesterday. This is the only time I have ever seen a hard surface here, not more than fifteen miles from One Ton, and it looks as if there had been much higher winds. The sastrugi, which have been facing S.W., are now beginning to run a little more westerly. I believe this to be quite a different wind circulation from Ross Island, which as a whole gets its wind from the Bluff. The Bluff is, I believe, the dividing line, though big general blizzards sweep over the whole, irrespective of local areas of circulation. This was amply corroborated by our journey out here last autumn. Well, this is better than then—just round here we had a full blizzard and -33°.
November 10. Early morning. A perfect night for marching, but about -20° and chilly for waiting about. The mules are going well, but Lal Khan is thinning down a lot: Abdullah and Khan Sahib are also off their feed. Their original allowance of 11 lbs. oats and oilcake has been reduced to 9 lbs., and they are not eating this. The dogs took another 300 lbs. off them to-day, and pulled it very well. The surface has been splendidly hard, which is most surprising. Wright does not think that there has been an abnormal deposition of snow the last winter; he says it is about 1½ feet, which is much the same as last year. The mules are generally not sinking in more than two inches, but in places, especially latterly, they have been in five, or six. This is the first we have had this year of crusts, and some of them to-day have been exceptionally big: two at lunch must have lasted several seconds. The dogs seem to think the devil is after them when one of these goes off, and put on a terrific spurt. It is interesting to watch them snuffing in the hoof-marks of the mules, where there is evidently some scent left. In these temperatures they are always kicking their legs about at the halts. As the sun gained power this morning a thick fog came up very suddenly. I believe this is a sign of good weather.
The Dog Party Leaves Hut Point—November 1, 1912
November 11. Early morning. One Ton Depôt. Wright got a latitude sight yesterday putting us six miles from One Ton, and our sledge-meter shows 5¾, and here we are. More frost-bite this morning, and it was pretty cold starting in a fair wind and -7° temperature. We have continued this really splendid surface, and now the sastrugi are pointing a little more to the south of S.W. While there are not such big mounds, the surface does not yet show any signs of getting bad. There were the most beautiful cloud-effects as we came along—a deep black to the west, shading into long lines of grey and lemon yellow round the sun, with a vertical shaft through them, and a bright orange horizon. Now there is a brilliant parhelion. Given sun, two days here are never alike. Whatever the monotony of the Barrier may be, there is endless variety in the sky, and I do not believe that anywhere in the world such beautiful colours are to be seen.
I had a fair panic as we came up to the depôt. I did not see that one body of the ponies had gone ahead of the others and camped, but ahead of the travelling ponies was the depôt, looking very black, and I thought that there was a tent. It would be too terrible to find that, though one knew that we had done all that we could, if we had done something different we could have saved them.
And then we find that the provisions we left here for them in the tank are soaked with paraffin. How this has happened is a mystery, but I think that the oil in the XS tin, which was very full, must have forced its way out in a sudden rise of temperature in a winter blizzard, and though the tin was not touching the tank, it has found its way in.
Altogether things seemed rather dismal, but a visit to the mules is cheering, for they seem very fit as a whole and their leaders are cheerful. There are three sacks of oats here—had we known it would have saved a lot of weight—but we didn't, and we have plenty with what we have brought, so they will be of little use to us. There is no compressed fodder, which would have been very useful, for the animals which are refusing the oats would probably eat it.
Gulab has a very bad chafe, but he is otherwise fit—and it does not seem possible in this life to kill a mule because of chafing. It is a great deal to know that he does not seem to be hurt by it, and pulls away gallantly. Crean says he had to run a mile this morning with Rani. Marie says he is inventing some new ways of walking, one step forward and one hop back, in order to keep warm when leading Khan Sahib. Up to date we cannot say that the Fates have been unkind to us.
November 12. Early morning. Lunch 2.30 a.m. I am afraid our sledge-meters do not agree over this morning's march. The programme is to do thirteen miles a day if possible from here: that is 7½ before lunch and 5½ afterwards. We could see two cairns of last year on our right as we came along. We have got on to a softer surface now and there is bad news of Lal Khan, and it will depend on this after-lunch march whether he must be shot this evening or not. It was intended to shoot a mule two marches from One Ton, but till just lately it had not been thought that it must be Lal Khan. He is getting very slow, and came into camp with Khan Sahib: the trouble of course is that he will not eat: he has hardly eaten, they say, a day's ration since he left Hut Point, and he can't work on nothing. It is now -16°, with a slight southerly wind.
Nearly mid-day. 11-12 miles south of One Ton. We have found them—to say it has been a ghastly day cannot express it—it is too bad for words. The tent was there, about half-a-mile to the west of our course, and close to a drifted-up cairn of last year. It was covered with snow and looked just like a cairn, only an extra gathering of snow showing where the ventilator was, and so we found the door.
It was drifted up some 2-3 feet to windward. Just by the side two pairs of ski sticks, or the topmost half of them, appeared over the snow, and a bamboo which proved to be the mast of the sledge.
Their story I am not going to try and put down. They got to this point on March 21, and on the 29th all was over.
Nor will I try and put down what there was in that tent. Scott lay in the centre, Bill on his left, with his head towards the door, and Birdie on his right, lying with his feet towards the door.
Bill especially had died very quietly with his hands folded over his chest. Birdie also quietly.
Oates' death was a very fine one. We go on to-morrow to try and find his body. He was glad that his regiment would be proud of him.
They reached the Pole a month after Amundsen.
We have everything—records, diaries, etc. They have among other things several rolls of photographs, a meteorological log kept up to March 13, and, considering all things, a great many geological specimens. And they have stuck to everything. It is magnificent that men in such case should go on pulling everything that they have died to gain. I think they realized their coming end a long time before. By Scott's head was tobacco: there is also a bag of tea.
Atkinson gathered every one together and read to them the account of Oates' death given in Scott's Diary: Scott expressly states that he wished it known. His (Scott's) last words are:
"For God's sake take care of our people."
Then Atkinson read the lesson from the Burial Service from Corinthians. Perhaps it has never been read in a more magnificent cathedral and under more impressive circumstances—for it is a grave which kings must envy. Then some prayers from the Burial Service: and there with the floor-cloth under them and the tent above we buried them in their sleeping-bags—and surely their work has not been in vain.[291]
That scene can never leave my memory. We with the dogs had seen Wright turn away from the course by himself and the mule party swerve right-handed ahead of us. He had seen what he thought was a cairn, and then something looking black by its side. A vague kind of wonder gradually gave way to a real alarm. We came up to them all halted. Wright came across to us. 'It is the tent.' I do not know how he knew. Just a waste of snow: to our right the remains of one of last year's cairns, a mere mound: and then three feet of bamboo sticking quite alone out of the snow: and then another mound, of snow, perhaps a trifle more pointed. We walked up to it. I do not think we quite realized—not for very long—but some one reached up to a projection of snow, and brushed it away. The green flap of the ventilator of the tent appeared, and we knew that the door was below.
Two of us entered, through the funnel of the outer tent, and through the bamboos on which was stretched the lining of the inner tent. There was some snow—not much—between the two linings. But inside we could see nothing—the snow had drifted out the light. There was nothing to do but to dig the tent out. Soon we could see the outlines. There were three men here.
Bowers and Wilson were sleeping in their bags. Scott had thrown back the flaps of his bag at the end. His left hand was stretched over Wilson, his lifelong friend. Beneath the head of his bag, between the bag and the floor-cloth, was the green wallet in which he carried his diary. The brown books of diary were inside: and on the floor-cloth were some letters.
Everything was tidy. The tent had been pitched as well as ever, with the door facing down the sastrugi, the bamboos with a good spread, the tent itself taut and shipshape. There was no snow inside the inner lining. There were some loose pannikins from the cooker, the ordinary tent gear, the personal belongings and a few more letters and records—personal and scientific. Near Scott was a lamp formed from a tin and some lamp wick off a finnesko. It had been used to burn the little methylated spirit which remained. I think that Scott had used it to help him to write up to the end. I feel sure that he had died last—and once I had thought that he would not go so far as some of the others. We never realized how strong that man was, mentally and physically, until now.
We sorted out the gear, records, papers, diaries, spare clothing, letters, chronometers, finnesko, socks, a flag. There was even a book which I had lent Bill for the journey—and he had brought it back. Somehow we learnt that Amundsen had been to the Pole, and that they too had been to the Pole, and both items of news seemed to be of no importance whatever. There was a letter there from Amundsen to King Haakon. There were the personal chatty little notes we had left for them on the Beardmore—how much more important to us than all the royal letters in the world.
We dug down the bamboo which had brought us to this place. It led to the sledge, many feet down, and had been rigged there as a mast. And on the sledge were some more odds and ends—a piece of paper from the biscuit box: Bowers' meteorological log: and the geological specimens, thirty pounds of them, all of the first importance. Drifted over also were the harnesses, ski and ski-sticks.
Hour after hour, so it seemed to me, Atkinson sat in our tent and read. The finder was to read the diary and then it was to be brought home—these were Scott's instructions written on the cover. But Atkinson said he was only going to read sufficient to know what had happened—and after that they were brought home unopened and unread. When he had the outline we all gathered together and he read to us the Message to the Public, and the account of Oates' death, which Scott had expressly wished to be known.
We never moved them. We took the bamboos of the tent away, and the tent itself covered them. And over them we built the cairn.
I do not know how long we were there, but when all was finished, and the chapter of Corinthians had been read, it was midnight of some day. The sun was dipping low above the Pole, the Barrier was almost in shadow. And the sky was blazing—sheets and sheets of iridescent clouds. The cairn and Cross stood dark against a glory of burnished gold.
Copy of Note left at the Cairn, over the Bodies
November 12th, 1912.
Lat. 79° 50´ S.