Читать книгу The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard - Страница 20

It is no part of my job to give an account of this journey. The dogs failed badly: probably the Norwegian stock-fish which had been brought through the tropics to feed them was tainted: at any rate they sickened; and before the journey was done all the dogs had to be killed or had died. A fortnight after starting, the party was relaying—that is, taking on part of their load and returning for the rest; and this had to be continued for thirty-one days.

The Last Of The Dogs—E. A. Wilson, del.

The ration of food was inadequate and they became very hungry as time went on; but it was not until December 21 that Wilson disclosed to Scott that Shackleton had signs of scurvy which had been present for some time. On December 30, in latitude 82° 16´ S., they decided to return. By the middle of January the scurvy signs were largely increased and Shackleton was seriously ill and spitting blood. His condition became more and more alarming, and he collapsed on January 18, but revived afterwards. Sometimes walking by the sledge, sometimes being carried upon it, Shackleton survived: Scott and Wilson saved his life. The three men reached the ship on February 3, after covering 960 statute miles in 93 days. Scott and Wilson were both extremely exhausted and seriously affected by scurvy. It was a fine journey, the geographical results of which comprised the survey of some three hundred miles of new coast-line, and a further knowledge of the Barrier upon which they travelled.

While Scott was away southwards an organized attempt was made to discover the nature of the mountains and glaciers which lay across the Sound to the west. This party actually reached the plateau which lay beyond, and attained a height of 8900 feet, when "as far as they could see in every direction to the westward of them there extended a level plateau, to the south and north could be seen isolated nunataks, and behind them showed the high mountains which they had passed": a practicable road to the west had been found.

I need note no more than these two most important of the many journeys carried out this season: nor is it necessary for me to give any account of the continuous and fertile scientific work which was accomplished in this virgin land. In the meantime a relief ship, the Morning, had arrived. It was intended that the Discovery should return this year as soon as the sea-ice in which she was imprisoned should break up and set her free. As February passed, however, it became increasingly plain that the ice conditions were altogether different from those of the previous year. On the 8th the Morning was still separated from the Discovery by eight miles of fast ice. March 2 was fully late for a low-powered ship to remain in the Sound, and on this date the Morning left. By March 13 all hope of the Discovery being freed that year was abandoned.

The second winter passed much as the first, and as soon as spring arrived sledging was continued. These spring journeys on the Barrier, with sunlight only by day and low temperatures at all times, entailed great discomfort and, perhaps worse, want of sleep, frost-bites, and a fast accumulation of moisture in all one's clothing and in the sleeping-bags, which resulted in masses of ice which had to be thawed out by the heat of one's body before any degree of comfort could be gained. A fortnight was considered about the extreme limit of time for such a journey, and generally parties were not absent so long; for at this time a spring journey was considered a dreadful experience. "Wait till you've had a spring journey" was the threat of the old stagers to us. A winter journey lasting nearly three times as long as a spring journey was not imagined. I advise explorers to be content with imagining it in the future.

The hardest journey of this year was carried out by Scott with two seamen of whom much will be written in this history. Their names are Edgar Evans and Lashly. The object of the journey was to explore westwards into the interior of the plateau. By way of the Ferrar Glacier they reached the ice-cap after considerable troubles, not the least of which was the loss of the data necessary for navigation contained in an excellent publication called Hints to Travellers, which was blown away. Then for the first time it was seen what additional difficulties are created by the climate and position of this lofty plateau, which we now know extends over the Pole and probably reaches over the greater part of the Antarctic continent. It was the beginning of November: that is, the beginning of summer; but the conditions of work were much the same as those found during the spring journeys on the Barrier. The temperature dropped into the minus forties; but the worst feature of all was a continuous head-wind blowing from west to east which combined with the low temperature and rarefied air to make the conditions of sledging extremely laborious. The supporting party returned, and the three men continued alone, pulling out westwards into an unknown waste of snow with no landmarks to vary the rough monotony. They turned homewards on December 1, but found the pulling very heavy; and their difficulties were increased by their ignorance of their exact position. The few glimpses of the land which they obtained as they approached it in the thick weather which prevailed only left them in horrible uncertainty as to their whereabouts. Owing to want of food it was impossible to wait for the weather to clear: there was nothing to be done but to continue their eastward march. Threading their way amidst the ice disturbances which mark the head of the glaciers, the party pushed blindly forward in air which was becoming thick with snow-drift. Suddenly Lashly slipped: in a moment the whole party was flying downwards with increasing speed. They ceased to slide smoothly; they were hurled into the air and descended with great force on to a gradual snow incline. Rising they looked round them to find above them an ice-fall 300 feet high down which they had fallen: above it the snow was still drifting, but where they stood there was peace and blue sky. They recognized now for the first time their own glacier and the well-remembered landmark, and far away in the distance was the smoking summit of Mount Erebus. It was a miracle.

Excellent subsidiary journeys were also made of which space allows no mention here: nor do they bear directly upon this last expedition. But in view of the Winter Journey undertaken by us, if not for the interest of the subject itself, some account must be given of those most aristocratic inhabitants of the Antarctic, the Emperor penguins, with whom Wilson and his companions in the Discovery now became familiar.

There are two kinds of Antarctic penguins—the little Adélie with his blue-black coat and his white shirt-front, weighing 16 lbs., an object of endless pleasure and amusement, and the great dignified Emperor with long curved beak, bright orange head-wear and powerful flippers, a personality of 6½ stones. Science singles out the Emperor as being the more interesting bird because he is more primitive, possibly the most primitive of all birds. Previous to the Discovery Expedition nothing was known of him save that he existed in the pack and on the fringes of the continent.

We have heard of Cape Crozier as being the eastern extremity of Ross Island, discovered by Ross and named after the captain of the Terror. It is here that with immense pressures and rendings the moving sheet of the Barrier piles itself up against the mountain. It is here also that the great ice-cliff which runs for hundreds of miles to the east, with the Barrier behind it and the Ross Sea beating into its crevasses and caves, joins the basalt precipice which bounds the Knoll, as the two-knobbed saddle which forms Cape Crozier is called. Altogether it is the kind of place where giants have had a good time in their childhood, playing with ice instead of mud—so much cleaner too!

But the slopes of Mount Terror do not all end in precipices. Farther to the west they slope quietly into the sea, and the Adélie penguins have taken advantage of this to found here one of their largest and most smelly rookeries. When the Discovery arrived off this rookery she sent a boat ashore and set up a post with a record upon it to guide the relief ship in the following year. The post still stands. Later it became desirable to bring the record left here more up to date, and so one of the first sledging parties went to try and find a way by the Barrier to this spot.

They were prevented from reaching the record by a series of most violent blizzards, and indeed Cape Crozier is one of the windiest places on earth, but they proved beyond doubt that a back-door to the Adélie penguins' rookery existed by way of the slopes of Mount Terror behind the Knoll. Early the next year another party reached the record all right, and while exploring the neighbourhood looked down over the 800-feet precipice which forms the snout of Cape Crozier. The sea was frozen over, and in a small bay of ice formed by the cliffs of the Barrier below were numerous little dots which resolved themselves into Emperor penguins. Could this be the breeding-place of these wonderful birds? If so, they must nurse their eggs in mid-winter, in unimagined cold and darkness.

Five days more elapsed before further investigation could be made, for a violent blizzard kept the party in their tents. On October 18 they set out to climb the high pressure ridges which lie between the level barrier and the sea. They found that their conjectures were right: there was the colony of Emperors. Several were nursing chicks, but all the ice in the Ross Sea was gone; only the small bay of ice remained. The number of adult birds was estimated at four hundred, the number of living chicks was thirty, and there were some eighty dead ones. No eggs were found.[18]

Several more journeys were made to this spot while the Discovery was in the south, generally in the spring; and the sum total of the information gained came to something like this. The Emperor is a bird which cannot fly, lives on fish which it catches in the sea, and never steps on land even to breed. For a reason which was not then understood it lays its eggs upon the bare ice some time during the winter and carries out the whole process of incubation on the sea ice, resting the egg upon its feet pressed closely to a patch of bare skin in the lower abdomen, and protected from the intense cold by a loose falling lappet of skin and feathers. By September 12, the earliest date upon which a party arrived, all the eggs which were not broken or addled were hatched, and there were then about a thousand adult Emperors in the rookery. Arriving again on October 19, a party experienced a ten days' blizzard which confined them during seven days to their tents, but during their windy visit they saw one of the most interesting scenes in natural history. The story must be told by Wilson, who was there:

"The day before the storm broke we were on an old outlying cone of Mount Terror, about 1300 feet above the sea. Below us lay the Emperor penguin rookery on the bay ice, and Ross Sea, completely frozen over, was a plain of firm white ice to the horizon. There was not even the lane of open water which usually runs along the Barrier cliff stretching away as it does like a winding thread to the east and out of sight. No space or crack could be seen with open water. Nevertheless the Emperors were unsettled owing, there can be no doubt, to the knowledge that bad weather was impending. The mere fact that the usual canal of open water was not to be seen along the face of the Barrier meant that the ice in Ross Sea had a southerly drift. This in itself was unusual, and was caused by a northerly wind with snow, the precursor here of a storm from the south-west. The sky looked black and threatening, the barometer began to fall, and before long down came snowflakes on the upper heights of Mount Terror.

"All these warnings were an open book to the Emperor penguins, and if one knew the truth there probably were many others too. They were in consequence unsettled, and although the ice had not yet started moving the Emperor penguins had; a long file was moving out from the bay to the open ice, where a pack of some one or two hundred had already collected about two miles out at the edge of a refrozen crack. For an hour or more that afternoon we watched this exodus proceeding, and returned to camp, more than ever convinced that bad weather might be expected. Nor were we disappointed, for on the next day we woke to a southerly gale and smother of snow and drift, which effectually prevented any one of us from leaving our camp at all. This continued without intermission all day and night till the following morning, when the weather cleared sufficiently to allow us to reach the edge of the cliff which overlooked the rookery.

The Emperors Rookery

"The change here was immense. Ross Sea was open water for nearly thirty miles; a long line of white pack ice was just visible on the horizon from where we stood, some 800 to 900 feet above the sea. Large sheets of ice were still going out and drifting to the north, and the migration of the Emperors was in full swing. There were again two companies waiting on the ice at the actual water's edge, with some hundred more tailing out in single file to join them. The birds were waiting far out at the edge of the open water, as far as it was possible for them to walk, on a projecting piece of ice, the very next piece that would break away and drift to the north. The line of tracks in the snow along which the birds had gone the day before was now cut off short at the edge of the open water, showing that they had gone, and under the ice-cliffs there was an appreciable diminution in the number of Emperors left, hardly more than half remaining of all that we had seen there six days before."[19]

Two days later the emigration was still in full swing, but only the unemployed seemed to have gone as yet. Those who were nursing chicks were still huddled under the ice-cliffs, sheltered as much as possible from the storm. Three days later (October 28) no ice was to be seen in the Ross Sea: the little bay of ice was gradually being eaten away: the same exodus was in progress and only a remnant of penguins was still left.

Of the conditions under which the Emperor lays her eggs, the darkness and cold and blighting winds, of the excessive mothering instinct implanted in the heart of every bird, male and female, of the mortality and gallant struggles against almost inconceivable odds, and the final survival of some 26 per cent of the eggs, I hope to tell in the account of our Winter Journey, the object of which was to throw light upon the development of the embryo of this remarkable bird, and through it upon the history of their ancestors. As Wilson wrote:

"The possibility that we have in the Emperor penguin the nearest approach to a primitive form not only of a penguin but of a bird makes the future working out of its embryology a matter of the greatest possible importance. It was a great disappointment to us that although we discovered their breeding-ground, and although we were able to bring home a number of deserted eggs and chicks, we were not able to procure a series of early embryos by which alone the points of particular interest can be worked out. To have done this in a proper manner from the spot at which the Discovery wintered in McMurdo Sound would have involved us in endless difficulties, for it would have entailed the risks of sledge travelling in mid-winter with an almost total absence of light. It would at any time require that a party of three at least, with full camp equipment, should traverse about a hundred miles of the Barrier surface in the dark and should, by moonlight, cross over with rope and axe the immense pressure ridges which form a chaos of crevasses at Cape Crozier. These ridges, moreover, which have taken a party as much as two hours of careful work to cross by daylight, must be crossed and re-crossed at every visit to the breeding site in the bay. There is no possibility even by daylight of conveying over them the sledge or camping kit, and in the darkness of mid-winter the impracticability is still more obvious. Cape Crozier is a focus for wind and storm, where every breath is converted, by the configuration of Mounts Erebus and Terror, into a regular drifting blizzard full of snow. It is here, as I have already stated, that on one journey or another we have had to lie patiently in sodden sleeping-bags for as many as five and seven days on end, waiting for the weather to change and make it possible for us to leave our tents at all. If, however, these dangers were overcome there would still be the difficulty of making the needful preparations from the eggs. The party would have to be on the scene at any rate early in July. Supposing that no eggs were found upon arrival, it would be well to spend the time in labelling the most likely birds, those for example that have taken up their stations close underneath the ice-cliffs. And if this were done it would be easier then to examine them daily by moonlight, if it and the weather generally were suitable: conditions, I must confess, not always easily obtained at Cape Crozier. But if by good luck things happened to go well, it would by this time be useful to have a shelter built of snow blocks on the sea-ice in which to work with the cooking lamp to prevent the freezing of the egg before the embryo was cut out, and in order that fluid solutions might be handy for the various stages of its preparation; for it must be borne in mind that the temperature all the while may be anything between zero and −50° F. The whole work no doubt would be full of difficulty, but it would not be quite impossible, and it is with a view to helping those to whom the opportunity may occur in future that this outline has been added of the difficulties that would surely beset their path."[20]

We shall meet the Emperor penguins again, but now we must go back to the Discovery, lying off Hut Point, with the season advancing and twenty miles of ice between her and the open sea. The prospects of getting out this year seeming almost less promising than those of the last year, an abortive attempt was made to saw a channel from a half-way point. Still, life to Scott and Wilson in a tent at Cape Royds was very pleasant after sledging, and the view of the blue sea framed in the tent door was very beautiful on a morning in January when two ships sailed into the frame. Why two? One was of course the Morning; the second proved to be the Terra Nova.

It seemed that the authorities at home had been alarmed at the reports brought back the previous year by the relief ship of the detention of the Discovery and certain outbreaks of scurvy which had occurred both on the ship and on sledge journeys. To make sure of relief two ships had been sent. That was nothing to worry about, but the orders they brought were staggering to sailors who had come to love their ship "with a depth of sentiment which cannot be surprising when it is remembered what we had been through in her and what a comfortable home she had proved."[21] Scott was ordered to abandon the Discovery if she could not be freed in time to accompany the relief ships to the north. For weeks there was little or no daily change. They started to transport the specimens and make the other necessary preparations. They almost despaired of freedom. Explosions in the ice were started in the beginning of February with little effect. But suddenly there came a change, and on the 11th, amidst intense excitement, the ice was breaking up fast. The next day the relief ships were but four miles away. On the 14th a shout of "The ships are coming, sir!" brought out all the men racing to the slopes above Arrival Bay. Scott wrote:

"The ice was breaking up right across the Strait, and with a rapidity which we had not thought possible. No sooner was one great floe borne away than a dark streak cut its way into the solid sheet that remained, and carved out another, to feed the broad stream of pack which was hurrying away to the north-west.

"I have never witnessed a more impressive sight; the sun was low behind us, the surface of the ice-sheet in front was intensely white, and in contrast the distant sea and its leads looked almost black. The wind had fallen to a calm, and not a sound disturbed the stillness about us.

"Yet in the midst of this peaceful silence was an awful unseen agency rending that great ice-sheet as though it had been naught but the thinnest paper. We knew well by this time the nature of our prison bars; we had not plodded again and again over those long dreary miles of snow without realizing the formidable strength of the great barrier which held us bound; we knew that the heaviest battle-ship would have shattered itself ineffectually against it, and we had seen a million-ton iceberg brought to rest at its edge. For weeks we had been struggling with this mighty obstacle … but now without a word, without an effort on our part, it was all melting away, and we knew that in an hour or two not a vestige of it would be left, and that the open sea would be lapping on the black rocks of Hut Point."[22]

Almost more dramatic was the grounding of the Discovery off the shoal at Hut Point owing to the rise of a blizzard immediately after her release from the ice. Hour after hour she lay pounding on the shore, and when it seemed most certain that she had been freed only to be destroyed, and when all hope was nearly gone, the wind lulled, and the waters of the Sound, driven out by the force of the wind, returned and the Discovery floated off with little damage. The whole story of the release from the ice and subsequent grounding of the Discovery is wonderfully told by Scott in his book.

Some years after this I met Wilson in a shooting lodge in Scotland. He was working upon grouse disease for the Royal Commission which had been appointed, and I saw then for the first time something of his magnetic personality and glimpses also of his methods of work. He and Scott both meant to go back and finish the job, and I then settled that when they went I would go too if wishing could do anything. Meanwhile Shackleton was either in the South or making his preparations to go there.

He left England in 1908, and in the following Antarctic summer two wonderful journeys were made. The first, led by Shackleton himself, consisted of four men and four ponies. Leaving Cape Royds, where the expedition wintered in a hut, in November, they marched due south on the Barrier outside Scott's track until they were stopped by the eastward trend of the range of mountains, and by the chaotic pressure caused by the discharge of a Brobdingnagian glacier.

But away from the main stream of the glacier, and separated from it by land now known as Hope Island, was a narrow and steep snow slope forming a gateway which opened on to the main glacier stream. Boldly plunging through this, the party made its way up the Beardmore Glacier, a giant of its kind, being more than twice as large as any other known. The history of their adventures will make anybody's flesh creep. From the top they travelled due south toward the Pole under the trying conditions of the plateau and reached the high latitude of 88° 23´ S. before they were forced to turn by lack of food.

While Shackleton was essaying the geographical Pole another party of three men under Professor David reached the magnetic Pole, travelling a distance of 1260 miles, of which 740 miles were relay work, relying entirely on man-haulage, and with no additional help. This was a very wonderful journey, and when Shackleton returned in 1909 he and his expedition had made good. During the same year the North Pole was reached by Peary after some twelve years of travelling in Arctic regions.

Scott published the plans of his second expedition in 1909. This expedition is the subject of the present history.

The Terra Nova sailed from the West India Dock, London, on June 1, 1910, and from Cardiff on June 15. She made her way to New Zealand, refitted and restowed her cargo, took on board ponies, dogs, motor sledges, certain further provisions and equipment, as well as such members of her executive officers and scientists as had not travelled out in her, and left finally for the South on November 29, 1910. She arrived in McMurdo Sound on January 4, 1911, and our hut had been built on Cape Evans and all stores landed in less than a fortnight. Shortly afterwards the ship sailed. The party which was left at Cape Evans under Scott is known as the Main Party.

But the scientific objects of the expedition included the landing of a second but much smaller party under Campbell on King Edward VII.'s Land. While returning from an abortive attempt to land here they found a Norwegian expedition under Captain Roald Amundsen in Nansen's old ship the Fram in the Bay of Whales: reference to this expedition will be found elsewhere.[23] One member of Amundsen's party was Johansen, the only companion of Nansen on his famous Arctic sledge journey, of which a brief outline has been given above.[24] Campbell and his five companions were finally landed at Cape Adare, and built their hut close to Borchgrevinck's old winter quarters.[25] The ship returned to New Zealand under Pennell: came back to the Antarctic a year later with further equipment and provisions, and again two years later to bring back to civilization the survivors of the expedition.

The adventures and journeyings of the various members of the Main Party are so numerous and simultaneous that I believe it will help the reader who approaches this book without previous knowledge of the history of the expedition to give here a brief summary of the course of events. Those who are familiar already with these facts can easily skip a page or two.

Two parties were sent out during the first autumn: the one under Scott to lay a large depôt on the Barrier for the Polar Journey, and this is called the Depôt Journey; the other to carry out geological work among the Western Mountains, so called because they form the western side of McMurdo Sound: this is called the First Geological Journey, and another similar journey during the following summer is called the Second Geological Journey.

Both parties joined up at the old Discovery Hut at Hut Point in March 1911, and here waited for the sea to freeze a passage northwards to Cape Evans. Meanwhile the men left at Cape Evans were continuing the complex scientific work of the station. All the members of the Main Party were not gathered together at Cape Evans for the winter until May 12. During the latter half of the winter a journey was made by three men led by Wilson to Cape Crozier to investigate the embryology of the Emperor penguin: this is called the Winter Journey.

The journey to the South Pole absorbed the energies of most of the sledging members during the following summer of 1911–12. The motor party turned back on the Barrier; the dog party at the bottom of the Beardmore Glacier. From this point twelve men went forward. Four of these men under Atkinson returned from the top of the glacier in latitude 85° 3´ S.: they are known as the First Return Party. A fortnight later in latitude 87° 32´ S. three more men returned under Lieutenant Evans: these are the Second Return Party. Five men went forward, Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Seaman Evans. They reached the Pole on January 17 to find that Amundsen had reached it thirty-four days earlier. They returned 721 statute miles and perished 177 miles from their winter quarters.

The supporting parties got back safely, but Lieutenant Evans was very seriously ill with scurvy. The food necessary for the return of the Polar Party from One Ton Camp had not been taken out at the end of February 1912. Evans' illness caused a hurried reorganization of plans, and I was ordered to take out this food with one lad and two dog-teams. This was done, and the journey may be called the Dog Journey to One Ton Camp.

We must now go back to the six men led by Campbell who were landed at Cape Adare in the beginning of 1911. They were much disappointed by the small amount of sledge work which they were able to do in the summer of 1911–1912, for the sea-ice in front of them was blown out early in the year, and they were unable to find a way up through the mountains behind them on to the plateau. Therefore, when the Terra Nova appeared on January 4, it was decided that she should land them with six weeks' sledging rations and some extra biscuits, pemmican and general food near Mount Melbourne at Evans Coves, some 250 geographical miles south of Cape Adare, and some 200 geographical miles from our Winter Quarters at Cape Evans. Late on the night of January 8, 1912, they were camped in this spot and saw the last of the ship steaming out of the bay. They had arranged to be picked up again on February 18.

Let us return to McMurdo Sound. My two dog-teams arrived at Hut Point from One Ton Depôt on March 16 exhausted. The sea-ice was still in from the Barrier to Hut Point, but from there onwards was open water, and therefore no communication was possible with Cape Evans. Atkinson, with one seaman, was at Hut Point and the situation which he outlined to me on arrival was something as follows:

The ship had left and there was now no possibility of her returning owing to the lateness of the season, and she carried in her Lieut. Evans, sick with scurvy, and five other officers and three men who were returning home this year. This left only four officers and four men at Cape Evans, in addition to the four of us at Hut Point.

The serious part of the news was that owing to a heavy pack the ship had been absolutely unable to reach Campbell's party at Evans Coves. Attempt after attempt had made without success. Would Campbell winter where he was? Would he try to sledge down the coast?

In the absence of Scott the command of the expedition under the extraordinarily difficult circumstances which arose, both now and during the coming year, would naturally have devolved upon Lieutenant Evans. But Evans, very sick, was on his way to England. The task fell to Atkinson, and I hope that these pages will show how difficult it was, and how well he tackled it.

There were now, that is since the arrival of the dog-teams four of us at Hut Point; and no help could be got from Cape Evans owing to the open water which intervened. Two of us were useless for further sledging and the dogs were absolutely done. As time went on anxiety concerning the non-arrival of the Polar Party was added to the alarm we already felt about Campbell and his men; winter was fast closing down, and the weather was bad. So little could be done by two men. What was to be done? When was it to be done with the greatest possible chance of success? Added to all his greater anxieties Atkinson had me on his hands—and I was pretty ill.

In the end he made two attempts.

The first with one seaman, Keohane, to sledge out on to the Barrier, leaving on March 26. They found the conditions very bad, but reached a point a few miles south of Corner Camp and returned. Soon after we knew the Southern Party must be dead.

Nothing more could be done until communication was effected with Winter Quarters at Cape Evans. This was done by a sledge journey over the newly frozen ice in the bays on April 10. Help arrived at Hut Point on April 14.

The second attempt was then made, and this consisted of a party of four men who tried to sledge up the Western Coast in order to meet and help Campbell if he was trying to sledge to us. This plucky attempt failed, as indeed it was practically certain it would.

The story of the winter that followed will be told, and of the decision which had to be taken to abandon either the search for the Polar Party (who must be dead) and their records, or Campbell and his men (who might be alive). There were not enough men left to do both. We believed that the Polar Party had come to grief through scurvy, or through falling into a crevasse—the true solution never occurred to us, for we felt sure that except for accident or disease they could find their way home without difficulty. We decided to leave Campbell to find his way unaided down the coast, and to try and find the Polar Party's records. To our amazement we found their snowed-up tent some 140 geographical miles from Hut Point, only 11 geographical miles from One Ton Camp. They had arrived there on March 19. Inside the tent were the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers. Oates had willingly walked out to his death some eighteen miles before in a blizzard. Seaman Evans lay dead at the bottom of the Beardmore Glacier.

Having found the bodies and the records the Search Party returned, proposing to make their way up the Western Coast in search of Campbell. On arrival at Hut Point with the dog-teams, I must have gone to open the hut door and found pinned on to it a note in Campbell's handwriting; but my recollection of this apparently memorable incident is extraordinarily vague. It was many long months since we had had good news. This was their story.

When Campbell originally landed at Evans Coves he brought with him sledging provisions for six weeks, in addition to two weeks' provisions for six men, 56 lbs. sugar, 24 lbs. cocoa, 36 lbs. chocolate and 210 lbs. of biscuit, some Oxo and spare clothing. In short, after the sledge work which they proposed, and actually carried out, the men were left with skeleton rations for four weeks. They had also a spare tent and an extra sleeping-bag. It was not seriously anticipated that the ship would have great difficulty in picking them up in the latter half of February.

Campbell's party had carried out successful sledging and useful geological work in the region of Evans Coves. They had then camped on the beach and looked for the ship to relieve them. There was open water lashed to fury by the wind so far as they could see, and yet she did not come. They concluded that she must have been wrecked. The actual fact was that thick pack ice lay beyond their vision through which Pennell was trying to drive his ship time after time, until he had either to go or to be frozen in. He never succeeded in approaching nearer than 27 miles.

It was now that a blizzard wind started to blow down from the plateau behind them out into the continually open sea in front. The situation was bad enough already, but of course such weather conditions made it infinitely worse. Evans Coves is paved with boulders over which all journeys had to be fought leaning against the wind as it blew: when a lull came the luckless traveller fell forward on to his face. Under these circumstances it was decided that preparations must be made to winter where they were, and to sledge down the coast to Cape Evans in the following spring. The alternative of sledging down the coast in March and April never seems to have been seriously considered. At Hut Point, of course, we were entirely in the dark as to what the party would do, hence Atkinson's journey over to the western side in April 1912.

Meanwhile the stranded men divided into two parties of three men each. The first under Campbell sank a shaft six feet down into a large snow-drift and thence, with pick and shovel, excavated a passage and at the end of it a cave, twelve feet by nine feet, and five feet six inches high. The second under Levick sought out and killed all the seal and penguin they could find, but their supply was pitifully small, and the men never had a full meal until mid-winter night. One man always had to be left to look after the tents, which were already so worn and damaged that it was unsafe to leave them in the wind.

By March 17 the cave was sufficiently advanced for three men to move in. Priestley must tell how this was done, but it should not be supposed that the weather conditions were in any way abnormal on what they afterwards called Inexpressible Island:

"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. Dickason hurt his knee and ankle and lost his sheath knife, and Campbell lost a compass 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 shore 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."

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, Dickason 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 gods. 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 passing through one of the most horrible winters which God has invented. They were very hungry, for the wind which kept the sea open also made the shore 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 scrapings 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 hell might be paved with good intentions, but it seemed probable that hell 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 scraps 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 Dickason 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.

Dickason 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 depôt 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 butter 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 depôt, 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 noble 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 Adélie 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 quantities 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 God 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 entitled to all the credit of a formal Official Narrative, without the least responsibility for the passages 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.

From New Zealand To The South Pole—Apsley Cherry-Garrard, del.—Emery Walker Ltd., Collotypers.