Читать книгу The Heart of the Antarctic, Volume 2. - E. H. Shackleton - Страница 6

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WE were distant about thirty-two miles from Hut Point when I decided to send the supporting-party back. The men watched us move off across the white plain until we became mere dots on the wide expanse, and then loaded up their gear and started north. Joyce was left in charge of the party, and he decided to make one forced march to Hut Point. They had to cross a good deal of crevassed ice, but a special effort would enable them to make their next camp under shelter. They got under way at 7 a.m. and marched till noon, making good progress in spite of the surface. In the afternoon they marched from two till five o'clock, and then a final march, from 7 p.m. till 1.30 a.m., took them to the old Discovery hut. The only incident of the day had been the succumbing of Brocklehurst's feet to another attack of frost-bite, he having worn ski-boots when the other men had put on finnesko. The damage was not serious, although the sufferer himself had trouble with his feet for some time after. The party had covered thirty-two miles in fourteen hours and a half, very good marching in view of the soft and broken character of the surface.

The party left Hut Point on the morning of November 12, and had a hard pull to Glacier Tongue. They at first thought of camping on the southern side of the Tongue, but, fortunately, kept on, for on the other side they met Day, Murray and Roberts, who had brought out stores with the motor-car. I had left orders that about 1800 lb. of provisions and gear should be taken to the depôt there, as a provision for the sledging-parties, in case they should be cut off from Cape Royds by open water on their return. Day had succeeded in running the car right up to the Tongue, about twelve miles from winter quarters. After a good meal of biscuits, jam, lobscouse, tongue and cods' roe, the two parties joined in getting the stores up to the depôt. Then they all went back to the winter quarters on the car and the light sledges it had in tow, leaving the heavy sledge that had been used by the supporting-party to be brought in at some later opportunity. They reached the hut in the small hours of the morning, and after another meal turned in for a good sleep.

Routine work occupied the men at the hut for some time after the return of the supporting-party. The scientific members were more than a little grieved to find that during the days when the hut had been untenanted, for Murray, Day and Roberts had been away too on a small expedition, some of the dogs had managed to get loose, and had killed thirty or forty penguins. We had from the first tried very hard to avoid any accidents of this sort, for we did not want to cause any unnecessary destruction of animal life. The penguins were now laying, and the men found that the eggs were very good to eat. The egg of the penguin is about the same size as that of a duck, and it has a transparent, jelly-like white and a small yolk. It takes about eight minutes' boiling to cook the egg nicely, and ten minutes if it is required set hard to the centre. The shell is the most beautiful dark-green inside, while the outer shell is chalky and white, though generally stained prettily by guano. Murray set aside a certain portion of the rookery for the supply of eggs for "domestic purposes," partly in order to ensure freshness and partly in order to ascertain how many eggs the penguins would lay. The other portion of the rookery was left untouched in order that the development and education of the young penguins might be studied.

The scientific work in its various branches was carried on by the men at the winter quarters, and they made a series of small expeditions to points of interest in the surrounding country. "To-day we motored to Tent Island viâ Inaccessible Island", wrote Priestley on November 14. "The main object of the expedition was to enable Joyce to kill and skin some young seals, but we did geological work as well. Day, Joyce, Murray and myself were the party, and when the motor was pulled up opposite Inaccessible Island three of us strolled over to look at its western slopes. We did not have time to climb, but the island from that side consists entirely of a flow of massive basalt, with small porphyritic felspars, which show out best in the weathered specimens. The sheet of basalt appeared to be dipping to the south. Day endeavoured to join us, but he chose a bad place, and got so deep in the drift that his axle was aground, so he was obliged to reverse engines and back out. From there we proceeded to Tent Island, and after Joyce had picked out a young seal and started operations, Murray, Day and I climbed up a water-worn gully on the island and had a cursory look at the rocks, which are an agglomerate with very coarse fragments; capping the agglomerate there is a massive flow of kenyte. . . . Day photographed the lower slopes of the gully while Murray and I climbed the rock-slopes till they ended, and then cut steps up a snow slope, at the top of which I came across a snow cornice and nearly got into trouble getting through it. On reaching the top we walked along the ridge, and photographed a splendid weathered kenyte boulder, hollowed out like a summer-house, and studded with felspars as an old-fashioned church door is studded with nails. After taking these photographs we climbed down the other side of the island, and walked round to join the others. The rock-climbing here, on any slopes at all steep, is very difficult because of the weathered fragments, which, owing to lack of powerful natural agents of transportation and to the fact that the wind carries all the lightest soil away, are left lying just at their angle of repose; a false step may send mountaineer and mountain surface hurtling down fifty or a hundred feet—no agreeable sensation, as I know from frequent experience. The sun was very hot to-day, and the gully was occupied by a little stream which was carrying quite a quantity of light soil down with it.

6. GLACIER SOUTH OF CAPE BARNE, WITH MOTOR TRAVELLING ON SEA ICE.

7. A SEAL DESTINED FOR THE LARDER

8. FETCHING SNOW FOR COOKING PURPOSES

9. TRANSPORTING A SLEDGE OVER BARE ROCKS FOR THE

SUMMER JOURNEY TO THE SLOPES OF MOUNT EREBUS

10. PARASITIC CONE ON THE SLOPES OF MOUNT EREBUS

11. SMOKE STREAMING FROM THE CRATER OF MOUNT EREBUS

Day had an exciting experience with the car during this journey. He encountered a big crack in the ice near Cape Barne, and steering at right angles to its course, put on speed in order to "fly" it in the usual way. When only a few yards from it and travelling at a speed of about fifteen miles an hour, he found that the crack made a sudden turn, so as to follow the line he was taking, and an instant later his right-hand front wheel dropped in. Any weak points in the car would have been discovered by the sudden strain, but happily nothing broke, and the crack making another turn, the wheel bounded out at the elbow, and the car was on sound ice again.

On November 16 Priestley made an interesting trip up the slopes of Erebus. Beyond the lower moraines and separated from them by a snowfield of considerable size, he found a series of kenyte ridges and cones, covered by very little débris. The ridges continued for some distance to the edge of the main glacier, where they terminated in several well-marked nunataks. "One which I visited, and which was the nearest to the large parasitic cone, was eighty feet high, of massive kenyte of brown colour and close texture, jointed into very large cubical joints by a very complete series of master-joints. From this nunatak I obtained nine kinds of lichen, including four or five new species, and one piece of moss. One of the lichens was so much larger than the others and branched so much that it might well be called a forest-lichen, and Murray considers it to be very closely allied to the reindeer-moss, or ice-moss."

Joyce was engaged at this time in making zoological collections, and with the aid of the motor-car he was able to cover a great deal of ground. The motor-car, driven by Day, would take him fifteen or sixteen miles over the sea-ice to some suitable locality, generally near the Cathedral Rocks on the north side of Glacier Tongue, and leave him there to kill seals and penguins. In order to kill young seals, some specimens of which were required, he had first to drive the mothers away, and this often took a long time, as the female seal becomes aggressive when interfered with in this manner. The work was not at all pleasant, but Joyce killed and prepared for preservation five young Weddell seals and four adult specimens. He had taken lessons in taxidermy before leaving England in order to be ready for this duty. Joyce and Day also killed and skinned twenty Emperor penguins, twelve Adelie penguins and twelve skua gulls, and all the men at the winter quarters assisted in collecting eggs.

A. THE RETURNING SUN

Murray was looking after the scientific work, paying special attention to his own particular domain, that of biology, and Marston was devoting as much time as he could to sketching and painting. He had taken oils, water colours and pastels to the south with him. He found that the water colours could not be used in the open at all, for they froze at once. Oils could be used fairly comfortably in the summer, though it was always chilly work to sit still for any length of time; during the spring the oils froze after they had been in the open air for about an hour, so that steady work was not possible. The pastels could always be used for making "colour notes", and they were also used for some of the colour-sketches that are reintroduced in this book. Mits had to be worn for all outside work, and this made sketching difficult.

Marston found, as other artists have found, that Nature's color-schemes in the Antarctic are remarkably crude, though often wondrously beautiful. Bright blues and greens are seen in violent contrast with brilliant reds, and an accurate record of the colours displayed in a sunset, as seen over broken ice, would suggest to many people an impressionistic poster of the kind seen in the London streets. Words fail one in an attempt to describe the wildly bizarre effects observed on days when the sky was fiery red and pale green, merging into a deep blue overhead, and the snowfields and rocks showed violet, green and white under the light of the moon. Marston used to delight in the "grey days", when there was no direct sunlight and the snow all around showed the most subtle tones of grey; there would be no shadows anywhere, perhaps light drifts of snow would be blowing about, and the whole scene became like a frozen fairyland. The snow-bergs and snowfields were white under direct light, but any hollows showed a vivid blue, deepening almost to black in the depths. There was an unlimited amount of interesting work for an artist, and Marston suffered to some extent, as did the other specialists on the expedition, from the fact that the number of men available was so small that every one, in addition to his own work, had to take a share in the routine duties.

Joyce devoted what spare time he could find to the completion of the volumes of the "Aurora Australis". Practice had made him more skilful in the handling of type, and he was able to make a good deal of progress, Day assisting with the preparation of the Venesta boards in which the volumes were to be bound. Some of the contributions towards the literary part of the work had come in late, so that there was plenty of work left to do. Marston went on with the lithographing for the illustrations.

Instructions had been left for a geological reconnaissance to be made towards the northern slopes of Mount Erebus, to examine, if possible, some parasitic cones and the oldest main crater of the mountain. Threatening weather prevented the carrying out of this plan for some time, yet for nearly a fortnight after the return of the southern supporting-party the expected blizzard did not come, while the weather was not propitious for the journey. At length no further delay was possible if the trip was to be made, as Priestly, the geologist, had to leave for the western mountains, so on November 23 the trip was begun, though with misgivings as to the long overdue blizzard.

The party consisted of Priestley, Marston, Joyce, Murray and Brocklehurst, and they took seventy pounds of food—a week's supply on the ordinary basis of thirty-two ounces per day for each man—but carried only one tent, intended to hold three men, their idea being that one or two men could sleep in the bags outside the tent. The weather was fine when they left the hut, but in the afternoon a strong southerly wind sprang up, and they had to march through low drift. They camped for the night close to a steep nunatak about five miles from the hut and nearly two thousand feet above sea-level. There was difficulty in getting a good snowy camping-ground, and they had to put up the tent on smooth blue glacier ice, having a thin coating of snow, and sloping gently down till it terminated in an ice-cliff overlooking the sea not many hundreds of yards below. After dinner Priestley, Murray and Joyce climbed over the nunataks, and found several new lichens, but the specimens collected were lost in the blizzard later on. Priestley also found a number of very perfect felspar crystals weathered out of the kenyte, and collected a couple of handfuls of the best. The members of the party retired to their sleeping-bags at eight o'clock on Monday night, and before midnight a blizzard swept down upon them, and proved to be an exceptionally severe one, with dense drift. Priestley had volunteered to sleep outside that night, and had taken his sleeping-bag to a nook in the rocks some distance away. When the other men heard the roaring of the blizzard they looked out, and were reassured to find that he had come down while there was time and had lain down close by the tent. The first night the light snow round the tent was blown away leaving one side open to the wind, but the occupants were able to find a few bits of rock close by, and secured it with those.

"Inside the tent for the next three days we were warm enough in our sleeping-bags", wrote Murray in his report. "Though we could not cook anything we ate the dry biscuit and pemmican. The little snow under the floorcloth was squeezed in the hand till it became ice, and we sucked this for drink. We were anxious about Priestley, and occasionally opened the door-flap and hailed him, when he always replied that he was all right. Joyce had managed to pass him some food early in the storm, so there was no fear of starving, but as we learned afterwards he could get nothing to drink and so could not eat. No one could offer to change places with him, as in doing so the sleeping-bag would have filled with snow, and might have blown away. On Wednesday Marston dressed in his Burberries and crawled down to Priestley, who reported 'All well', but he had had no food for twenty-four hours. Marston gave him some biscuits and chocolate. On Thursday morning he replied to the hail, but he was getting further and further from the tent, as every time he moved he slipped a little bit down the smooth glacier. At midday there was no reply to our hail, and we thought of the precipitous ice-foot and imagined things. Joyce and I dressed and went out to seek him. The drift was so thick that nothing whatever could be seen, and when the head was lifted to try and look the whole face and eyes were instantly covered by a sheet of ice. We crept about on hands and knees looking for the lost man. The only chance of getting back to the tent again was to steer by the wind, down the wind looking for Priestley, up the wind home again. At one side the sledge lay, forming a landmark, and Priestley had been not very far from the faraway end. Creeping along the sledge to where he had lain, I found that he was not there. Joyce went a little further to the right and came upon him, all alive."

Priestley's experiences during this period are related in his diary. "I had volunteered to sleep in the bag outside the tent", he wrote, "and by the time I was ready to turn in the drift had started again pretty badly, and the only sheltered spot I could find was at the top of the hill, so I told Joyce where he would find me in the morning and camped down, first luckily taking the precaution to put a few cubic feet of kenyte on my Burberry trousers and jacket outside the bag. A few hours later I woke up to find that the wind had increased to the dimensions of a blizzard, and that the drift was sweeping in a steady cloud over my head. I realised that those in the tent would have trouble in reaching me in the morning, so I got out of the bag and dressed, getting both the bag and my clothes full of snow in the process. Then, after some trouble, I got the bag down the steep slope of the nunatak to the sledge, where I wrapped myself up in the tent-cloth and lay athwart the wind. In about two hours I got drifted up so close that I was forced to get my shoulders out of the bag and lever myself out of the drift, and I then tried the experiment of tying head to wind on the opening of the sleeping-bag. This answered very well, and it was in this position that I spent the next seventy-two hours, getting shifted down a yard or two at a time at every change in the direction of the wind, and being gradually pushed along the windswept surface of the glacier until I was some twenty or thirty yards from the tent, and in some danger of getting swept, as the wind increased in violence, either on to some rocks a quarter of a mile below or else straight down the glacier and over a hundred-foot drop into Horseshoe Bay.

"Three times the people in the tent managed to pass me over some biscuits and raw pemmican, and Marston got my chocolate from the rucksack and brought it to me. My chief difficulty, however, was want of water. I had had a little tea before I turned in, but from that time for nearly eighty hours I had nothing to drink but some fragments of ice that I could prise up with the point of a small safety-pin. The second time Joyce came down, I believe about the beginning of the third day, he reported that the lashings at the top of the tent-poles had given way and that a rent had been torn in the material by the corner of a biscuit-tin. He added that it was impossible to keep any snow on the skirt of the tent, and that, as the snow-cloth was kept down only by a few rocks, the occupants of the tent were in constant expectation of seeing the tent leave them altogether, then Joyce left me on this occasion the drift was so thick that he could see nothing, and had to find his way back by shouting and listening for the return shouts of his tent-mates. He had gone only a quarter of the distance when both his eyes were filled with drift and immediately choked with ice, and when he reached the tent his face was a mask of ice and both feet were frost-bitten. He was helped inside and his feet brought round with rubbing, but no further attempt could be made to reach me. He had brought me some biscuit and raw pemmican. Cooking was not possible in the tent owing to the impossibility of reaching the sledge to get the oil-filler. It may sound like an exaggeration to say that we could not reach the sledge, which was four yards or less from the tent, but it must be remembered that we were lying on the slopes of a clean-swept glacier, on which finnesko could get no hold. The snow that had covered the ice when we pitched camp had all disappeared before the fury of the blizzard. Our spiked ski-boots were on the ice-axes round the sledge, where they had been hung to dry, but in any case it would have been impossible to wear them in a blizzard when feet were getting badly frost-bitten even in finnesko. A slip on the ice meant very serious danger of destruction.

"A slight decrease in the wind at the close of the third day gave me hope of getting up to the tent, and I prepared to move by putting on my outdoor clothing, no easy task in a sleeping-bag; then, rolling over on my side, I tried to get out. I found that there was less wind and less drift, and that I was able for the first time to see where I was with regard to surrounding objects. I was unable, however, to get out of the bag without being blown further down the slippery glacier, and I could see that it would be impossible to crawl up the slopes with the cumbrous bag. If I lost the bag I might as well have let myself slide."

About two hours after this Marston ventured forth from the tent in one of the remarkable intervals of calm occasionally experienced in the course of an Antarctic blizzard. On either side of the spot on which the camp had been pitched he could see the drift flying along with the full force of the wind, but he was able to make his way down to Priestley before the blizzard swept down on them again. They dragged the bag up the glacier by kneeling on it and jerking it along, and both got into the tent. "Four men in a three-men tent is a big squeeze," continued Priestley, "but five was fearful, and it was some time before I managed to get even sitting room. The first thing to do was to examine and attend frost-bitten feet, and the examination showed as big a crop as could be expected, for Marston and I each had both feet frost-bitten. A course of massage brought them round, and I got into Marston's bag while he made tea. . . . After tea I got into my own bag and lay down on top of Murray and Marston, and by dint of much wriggling we managed to get fairly settled, though our positions were so cramped that sleep was impossible.

"At about half-past four in the morning we cooked some pemmican in the tent and had a proper breakfast, as for the first time the wind had really begun to die away. Owing to the cold, the long period of semi-starvation in our cramped quarters, and the fact that oil had got mixed up with the food, we were unable to do justice either to the hoosh or to the cocoa which followed it, and were still fairly empty when the drift ceased and we turned out to face the blizzard, pack the sledge and start for home. The ascent of the mountain had, of course, to be abandoned. I put on my damp finnesko and went out to help, but in less than five minutes, though the temperature was plus 22° Fahr., I was back in the tent with the front portions of both feet frozen, and we took half an hour to bring them round by beating, massaging and rubbing with snow. This latter remedy, Marston's favourite, is a very drastic one, and as painful as any I know, for the Antarctic snow is invariably in small sharp crystals, very brittle and hard. We all chafed very much at the unavoidable delay, as there was every sign of a renewal of the blizzard and the drift, but fortunately we got under way before any drift rose, and the wind was rather in our favour. We left all the provisions there, and unanimously named the nunatak 'Misery Nunatak', and we were about as glad to leave the place as a soul would be to leave purgatory. We also left a tin of biscuits and some oil with a view to a future attempt at an ascent, to be made by Murray, Day, Marston and Joyce.

12. START OF WESTERN PARTY FROM CAPE ROYDS

13. THE MOTOR NEAR THE WINTER QUARTERS

14. A HAUL OF FISH

"There was a remarkable contrast between the windswept surface of the glacier and the surface over which we had toilsomely dragged the sledges during our day's journey outward. Instead of a uniform carpet, six inches deep, of soft snow, varied with drifts up to one's knees, we found patches of glacier ice, larger stretches of névé, and hard drifts of snow, on which neither our weight nor the weight of the sledge made the slightest impression; these drifts were deeply undercut on the south-east side, and were frequently a foot to eighteen inches in height. It was no easy matter to direct the sledge across the strong wind then blowing, although we had two men pulling and two others guiding the sledge, and we ascended about half a mile to the north of Horseshoe Bay in what was, for a long time, totally unfamiliar country, and through a series of moraines which had not yet been explored. I was, unfortunately, of no use in the pulling, being only just able to get along myself, and we were all extremely glad to get the sledge to the Back Door Bay end of Blue Lake, where it was left till the next day. We reached the hut and started on a course of feeding and recuperating, having been five days out."

Mount Erebus was noticed to be in eruption when the party was marching back to the hut on November 27. Huge diverging columns of steam were rising from the crater, and behind could be seen curious clouds of feathery cirrus. The temperature during the blizzard had not fallen below 12° Fahr., and been above 20° Fahr. during most of the time, so that the frost-bites sustained by the men must have been due mainly to lowered vitality, caused by the cramped situation and the lack of hot food.

The experience had been rather a severe one, but the men were none the worse for it after a day or two at the winter quarters, and they commenced at once to make preparations for the western journey. I had left instructions that on December 1 Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst should start for Butter Point with 600 lb. of stores in order to lay a depôt for the Northern Party which might be expected to reach that point on its journey back from the Magnetic Pole. Then the three men were to secure what stores they required for their own purposes, and proceed up the Ferrar Glacier as far as the Depôt Nunatak in order that Priestley might search for fossils in the sandstones of the western mountains. They were to get back to Butter Point early in January in order to meet Professor David, Mawson and Mackay, and if a junction was effected, Mawson, Priestley and Brocklehurst were to carry on geological work in Dry Valley and the surrounding country, while Professor David, Armytage and Mackay were to return to the winter quarters. The fact that the Northern Party did not arrive upset this arrangement to some extent, but the other three men did some very useful work. The mountains to the west of McMurdo Sound had been explored by Lieutenant Armytage and Captain Scott during the Discovery expedition, Armitage having climbed the mountains and penetrated west to an altitude of 9000 ft. on the ice-cap, while Scott had reached longitude 146° 33' East, on the western plateaux. Further information was required, however, in regard to the geology of the mountains.

Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst accordingly left the winter quarters on December 1, taking with them about 1200 lb. of gear and stores. The motor-car carried them for the first sixteen miles, although the sea ice was by this time in a very bad condition. The season was well advanced, the sun was above the horizon all the time, and there were cracks and pools in all directions. Day and Marston took the car out, and when they were coming back after leaving the Western Party the car got stuck firmly in a crack that ran across the course. They spent two hours cutting away the ice sufficiently to get the car out, and then had to make a détour of five miles in order to get round the crack. This was the last journey of the car in the Antarctic, for it was laid up when it got back to the hut.

The Western Party, after some heavy sledging, camped on December 4 at the foot of the Ferrar Glacier. Armytage was, at this time, suffering from an attack of snow-blindness. Priestley found moss and a species of fungus at the stranded moraines and also some kenyte. The men had been looking forward with pleasurable anticipation to securing skuas' eggs, which would have been a welcome change from pemmican and biscuit, but the birds had apparently not begun to lay and no eggs were secured. "A good deal of water denudation and transportation is taking place along the sea-cliffs of these moraines", wrote Priestley in his diary. "Quite a thick alluvial deposit, bearing a strong resemblance to a series of miniature deltas, is to be seen along the ice-foot awaiting the breaking up of the ice and its removal to the sea. The dust from the moraines had made a remarkable surface for two miles this side of them. Some winds had evidently been strong enough to remove a considerable quantity of the gravel with the snow, and the drifts which had contained this gravel had melted away, undercutting the edges of the cleaner snowdrifts, and thus giving a surface of bare ice with patchy snowdrifts undercut on all sides."

The party reached Butter Point, about thirty-five miles as the crow flies from the winter quarters, on December 5, and found a small depôt left there by the Northern Party on its way to the Magnetic Pole. Professor David and his companions had placed some final letters in a milk-tin. The stores brought for the purpose were placed at the depôt, and then Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst proceeded back to the winter quarters, arriving there on December 7 at 11.30 p.m. On December 9 they started for Butter Point again, taking five weeks' provisions for three men, in order to proceed up the Ferrar Glacier, and later to try to effect a junction with the Northern Party.

Only five men—Murray, Joyce, Day, Marston and Roberts—were now at the winter quarters. The heat of the Antarctic summer being at its height, the snowdrifts were melting rapidly, and the trickling of running water was everywhere to be heard. A large drift remained on the hill behind the hut, leading up to Mawson's anemometer. On December 1 it was melting in several little trickles, and next day it was found that one of these had got under the hut and made a pool about a foot in depth at the lower end. Many valuable things were stored under the hut, and the only opening was occupied by the pool of water. A hole had to be made at one side of the house, where the ground was higher, and into this Joyce crawled and spent some hours wriggling about in a space hardly more than one foot in height, rescuing valuable boxes of printing material and printed matter.

In the succeeding days the men at the hut had an illustration of the contrasts which the Antarctic climate presents. The heat of the sun melted the snow, and indeed made the weather oppressively warm, yet the water which ran below the house where the sunshine could not penetrate and the air temperature never rose above 32° Fahr., froze at night and never thawed again, so that the water each day added a layer to the accumulation beneath the hut, till it reached nearly up to the floor.

After the final departure of the Western Party on December 9, life at the winter quarters was uneventful until the arrival of the Nimrod. The members of the expedition remaining at Cape Royds were busy collecting skua eggs, preparing skins, carrying on the routine scientific observations, and watching the doings of the Adelie penguins. Many photographs were taken, especially by Day, of penguins in every variety of attitude, and of other subjects of interest. Experiments were made in photographing microscopic animals, and many pictures of them from life were obtained.

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