Terra Incognita (47 page)

Free hearts, free foreheads – you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil.

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are:

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

APPENDIX

Bread (plenty)

Sweetener – sugar is best, if not, use watered-down honey, treacle or syrup. At a pinch, jam (British) or jelly (American).
In extremis
, cocoa or drinking chocolate. Not powdered orange drink, please.

Liquid – preferably some form of milk.

Fat – butter, margarine or, if you must, oil

Dried fruit – any kind. If none available, use tinned fruit.

Liquor. There is usually a bottle of something lurking at established camps – Baileys, more often than not.

Cinnamon

Egg – either liquid (the stuff that comes in cartons) or rehydrated powder. In the highly unlikely event of receiving fresh eggs on a resupply, on no account should these be used in a b & b pudding. They are far too precious.

You will need a heatproof vessel. Established camps invariably have some kind of tin or pot among the kitchenware; if not, try ransacking the scientists' equipment. You really do need an oven for this dish. If, however, you are laid up in a tent, Beards love nothing more than experimenting for hours with foil and other items in order to create an oven-on-a-stove.

Slice the bread – any kind will do. (Do not, however, attempt to use Cabin Bread. This is a euphemistic brand name for large, dry crackers. Like eating sawdust.) Apply the fat to the bread in whatever way you can; I know how tricky spreading can be at twenty below, and how difficult it is to butter bread with cooking oil. Just do your best. Grease the pot. Begin layering it with slices of bread and ‘butter'. Between layers, add handfuls of fruit, spoonfuls of whatever sweetener you are using, sprinklings of cinnamon, dribblings of egg liquid and milk and splashes of any liquor you have. Do not be tempted to use beer.

Antarctic dried fruit normally requires a lot of soaking – in the case of BAS dates at least ten minutes' hard work with a geology hammer as well. If you are short of fruit, use nuts if you have them, but avoid the salted kind. If you have neither fruit nor nuts you might as well start lobbing anything in as long as it isn't actually savoury. Breakfast cereals work well. Cookies can be used in place of sugar and fruit, but do crumble them up well so that at least they no longer look like cookies. If you are reduced to using the British green foil packs of ‘Biscuits, Brown', you might start asking yourself whether it's worth continuing with this project. Tins of rice pudding aren't great in a b & b, but people will still eat it. The Kiwis have good chocolate chips, which go well.

You should end up with the consistency of a dense mushy sandwich. Top off with a final layer of bread and butter and sprinkle something sweet on top. Put pot in the oven for a while. If you have a grill, after removing from the oven sprinkle with extra sugar and grill for another while.

Get on the radio and call everyone in.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Excellent Antarctic bibliographies are available. In the United States the Library of Congress publishes
Antarctic Bibliography
for the National Science Foundation. It also produces the monthly
Current Antarctic Literature
. In the U.K. the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) publishes
Polar and Glaciological Abstracts
. Most major books and journals about Antarctica are listed in
The Antarctic
(Clio Press, Oxford 1994) compiled by James Meadows, William Mills and Harry King.

Amundsen, Roald,
The South Pole
, John Murray, London 1912

Bainbridge, Beryl,
The Birthday Boys
, Duckworth, London 1991

Baughmann, T. S.,
Before the Heroes Came
, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska 1994

Beaglehole, J. C. (ed.),
The Journals of Captain James Cook
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1961

Bellow, Saul,
More Die of Heartbreak
, William Morrow, New York 1987

Beltramino, Juan Carlos M.,
The Structure and Dynamics of Antarctic Population
, Vantage Press, New York 1993

Bennet, Glin,
Beyond Endurance
, Secker & Warburg, London 1983

Birkin, Andrew,
J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys
Constable, London 1979

Brittanico, Mercurio (Bishop Joseph Hall),
Mundus Alter et Idem
, Frankfurt 1605, new English edition Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1937

Byrd, Richard E.,
Discovery
, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York 1935

——,
Alone
, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York 1938

Cahill, Tim, ‘Antarctic Passages', in
Pecked to Death by Ducks
, Random House, New York 1993

Campbell, David,
The Crystal Desert
, Houghton Mifflin, New York 1992

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley,
The Worst Journey in the World
, Chatto and Windus, London 1922

Cook, F. A.
Through the First Antarctic Night
, William Heinemann, London 1900

Darlington, Jennie,
My Antarctic Honeymoon
, Doubleday, New York 1956

Debenham, Back, June (ed.),
The Quiet Land: The Diaries of Frank Debenham
, Bluntisham Books, Harlston 1992

Dodge, Ernest S.,
The Polar Rosses
, Faber & Faber, London 1973

Eliot, T. S.,
The Waste Land
, Faber & Faber, London 1925

——,
Four Quartets
, Faber & Faber, London 1944

Girouard, Mark,
The Return to Camelot
, Yale University Press, London 1991

Hattersley-Smith, G.,
The History of Place-Names in the British Antarctic Territory
, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge 1991

Headland, Robert,
Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions
, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1989

Holt, Ki re,
The Race
, Michael Joseph, London 1974

Huntford, Roland,
Scott and Amundsen
, Hodder & Stoughton, London 1979

——,
Shackleton
, Hodder & Stoughton, London 1985

Hurley, Frank,
Argonauts of the South
, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York 1925

Jacka, Frank & Eleanor (eds),
Mawson's Antarctic Diaries
, Adelaide University Press, Adelaide 1988

Joyce, Ernest,
The South Polar Trail
, Duckworth, London 1929

Keneally, Thomas,
Victim of the Aurora
, William Collins, London & Sydney 1977

King, H. G. R. (ed.),
The Wicked Mate: the Antarctic Diary of Victor Campbell
, Bluntisham Books, Norfolk 1988

Kushner, Tony,
Angels in America
, Nick Hern Books, London 1992

Lansing, Alfred,
Endurance
, Hodder & Stoughton, London 1959

Lashly, William,
Under Scott's Command
, Victor Gollancz, London 1969

Le Guin, Ursula K., ‘Sur', in
The New Yorker
, 1 February 1982

Lessing, Doris, Afterword to
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
, Jonathan Cape, London 1982

Lopez, Barry,
Arctic Dreams
, Macmillan, New York 1986

Marret, Mario,
Antarctic Venture
, William Kimber, London 1955

Mawson, Douglas,
Home of the Blizzard
, William Heinemann, London 1915

Mear, Roger and Swan, Robert,
In the Footsteps of Scott
, Jonathan Cape, London 1987

Messner, Reinhold,
Antarctica: Both Heaven and Hell
, Crowood Press, Marlborough 1991

Mickleburgh, Edwin,
Beyond the Frozen Sea
, Bodley Head, London 1990

Nansen, Fridtjof,
Farthest North
, Macmillan, London 1897

Newman, Stanley (ed.),
Shackleton's Lieutenant: The ‘Nimrod' Diary of A. L. A. Mackintosh
, Polar Publications, Auckland NZ 1990

Paltock, Robert,
The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornishman, Relating Particularly his Shipwreck near the South Pole
, Berwick, London 1784 (first published anonymously)

Poe, Edgar Allan,
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
, Harper and Brothers, New York 1838

Pynchon, Thomas,
V
, Jonathan Cape, London 1963

Pyne, Stephen J.,
The Ice
, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 1986

Richards, R. W.,
The Ross Sea Shore Party
, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge 1962

Riffenburgh, Beau,
The Myth of the Explorer
, Belhaven Press and Scott Polar Research Institute, London and Cambridge 1993

Rodgers, Eugene,
Beyond the Barrier
, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1990

Ross, Sir James Clark,
A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions
, John Murray, London 1847

Rymill, John,
Southern Lights
, The Travel Book Club, London 1938

Scott, Captain Robert F.,
The Voyage of the Discovery
, Macmillan, London 1905

——,
Scott's Last Expedition
, Smith, Elder & Co, London 1913

Shackleton, Ernest,
The Heart of the Antarctic
, William Heinemann, London 1909

——,
South
, William Heinemann, London 1919

Simpson-Housley, Paul,
Antarctica: Exploration, Perception and Reality
, Routledge, London 1992

Spufford, Francis,
I May Be Some Time
, Faber & Faber, London 1996

Stoppard, Tom,
Jumpers
, Faber & Faber, London 1972

Stroud, Mike,
Shadows on the Wasteland
, Jonathan Cape, London 1993

Thomson, David,
Scott's Men
, Allen Lane, London 1977

Verne, Jules,
Le Sphinx des glaces
, Paris 1897

Wilson, Edward,
Diary of the ‘Discovery' Expedition
, Humanities Press, New York 1967

——,
Diary of the ‘Terra Nova' Expedition
, Blandford Press, London 1972

Most of the archive material at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge is fragile, and tends to be accessible only to researchers.

Blackborow, Perce, Talk given at YMCA Boy's Club, Newport, family archive, undated

Bowers, H. R., diary, 1910–12, SPRI

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley, diaries and notebooks, 1910–13, SPRI

Grisez, Dave, diary 1955–7, private archive

Letters to Mrs Oates, various authors and dates, SPRI

Nankyokuki – Records of Antarctica, Japanese Antarctic Expedition 1911–12, translation in progress: Lara Shibata and Hilary Shibata, care of SPRI

Oates, L. E. G., Letters to his mother, SPRI

Orde-Lees, T. H., diaries, 1915–16, SPRI

Scott, Captain Robert F.,
Discovery
diaries, 1901–1902; 1904, SPRI

Shackleton, Ernest, diary of Southern Journey, 1902–3, SPRI

Stuster, Jack, ‘The Modern Explorer's Guide to Long Duration Isolation and Confinement', prepared for NASA by Anacapa Sciences, Santa Barbara 1995

The South Polar Times,
various issues, SPRI

Spencer-Smith, A., sledging diaries, 1915–16, SPRI

Wild, Frank, sledging diary, 1908–9, SPRI

Worsley, F. A., diary/log, 1916, SPRI

INTRODUCTION

¹
99.6 per cent is the latest figure from the BAS/SPRI satellite map.

CHAPTER TWO

¹
Winds that cool, grow denser and therefore rush downwards.

²
A neve is a snowfield at the head of a glacier which has yet to become compacted into glacier ice. A typical configuration of ice from the inland plateau passes from neve to glacier, thereupon to ice sheet, ice shelf, sea ice and then, eventually, to liquid sea. Neve snow squeaks when you plunge in your ice axe.

¹
Approximately thirty of the 200 research camps in Antarctica are operational all the year round.

CHAPTER THREE

¹
The importance of Scott's death was brilliantly illustrated in a seven-part Central Television series,
The Last Place on Earth
(screened on PBS in the States), based on Roland Huntford's book. Amundsen, back in Norway after his great triumph, is soaping himself in the bath. His brother and confidant appears in the doorway to tell him that Scott died on the journey back from the Pole. ‘So he has won,' says the actor playing Amundsen quietly.