The Worst Journey in the World (21 page)

We were to be hunted by these Killer whales again.

The second adventure was the loss of the third motor sledge. It was
Sunday morning, January 8, and Scott had given orders that this motor was
to be hoisted out of the ship. "This was done first thing and the motor
placed on firm ice. Later Campbell told me one of the men had dropped a
leg through crossing a sludgy patch some 200 yards from the ship. I
didn't consider it very serious, as I imagined the man had only gone
through the surface crust. About 7 A.M. I started for the shore with a
single man load, leaving Campbell looking about for the best crossing for
the motor."
^[98]

I find a note in my own diary as to what happened after that: "Last night
the ice was getting very soft in places, and I was a little doubtful
about leading ponies over a spot on the route to the hut which is about a
quarter of a mile from the ship. It has been thawing very fast the last
few days, and has been very hot as Antarctic weather goes. This morning
was the same, and Bailey went in up to his neck.

"Some half-hour after the motor was put on to the floe, we were told to
tow it on to firm ice as that near the ship was breaking up. All hands
started on a long tow line. We got on to the rotten piece, and somebody
behind shouted 'You must run.' From that moment everything happened very
quickly. Williamson fell right in through the ice; immediately afterwards
we were all brought up with a jerk. Then the line began to pull us
backwards; the stern of the motor had sunk through the ice, and the whole
car began to sink. It slowly went right through and disappeared and then
the tow line followed it. Everything possible was done to hang on to the
rope, but in the end we had to let it go, each man keeping his hold until
he was dragged to the lip of the hole. Then we made for the fast ice,
leaving the rotten bit between us and the ship.

"Pennell and Priestley sounded their way back to the ship, and Day asked
Priestley to bring his goggles when he returned. They came back with a
life-line, Pennell leading. Suddenly the ice gave way under Priestley,
who disappeared entirely and came up, so we learned afterwards, under the
ice, there being a big current. In a moment Pennell was lying flat upon
the floe on his chest, got his hand under Priestley's arm, and so pulled
him out. All Priestley said was, 'Day, here are your goggles.' We all got
back to the ship, but communication between the ship and the shore was
interrupted for the rest of the day, when a solid road was found right up
to the ship in another place."
^[99]

Meanwhile the hut was rising very quickly, and Davies, who was Chippy
Chap, the carpenter, deserves much credit. He was a leading shipwright
in the navy, always willing and bright, and with a very thorough
knowledge of his job. I have seen him called up hour after hour, day and
night, on the ship, when the pumps were choked by the coal balls which
formed in the bilges, and he always arrived with a smile on his face.
Altogether he was one of our most useful men. In this job of hut-building
he was helped by two of our seamen, Keohane and Abbott, and others.
Latterly I believe there were more people working than there were
hammers!

A plan of this hut is given here. It was 50 feet long, by 25 feet wide,
and 9 feet to the eaves. The insulation, which was very satisfactory, was
seaweed, sewn up in the form of a quilt.

"The sides have double [match-] boarding inside and outside the frames,
with a layer of our excellent quilted seaweed insulation between each
pair of boardings. The roof has a single match-boarding inside, but on
the outside is a match-boarding, then a layer of 2-ply ruberoid, then a
layer of quilted seaweed, then a second match-boarding, and finally a
cover of 3-ply ruberoid."
^[100]

The floor consisted of a wooden boarding next the frame, then a quilt of
seaweed, then a layer of felt upon which was a second boarding and
finally linoleum.

We thought we should be warm, and we were. In fact, during the winter,
with twenty-five men living there, and the cooking range going, and
perhaps also the stove at the other end, the hut not infrequently became
fuggy, big though it was.

The entrance was through a door in a porch before you got to the main
door. In the porch were the generators of the acetylene gas, which was
fitted throughout by Day, who was also responsible for the fittings of
the ventilator, cooking range, and stove, the chimney pipes from these
running along through the middle of the hut before entering a common
vent. Little heat was lost. The pipes were fitted with dampers, and air
inlets which could be opened or shut at will to control the ventilation.
Besides a big ventilator in the top of the hut there was an adjustable
air inlet also at the base of the chamber which formed the junction of
the two chimneys. The purpose of this was also ventilation, but it was
not successful.

The bulkhead which separated the men's quarters, or mess deck, from the
rest of the hut, was formed of such cases as contained goods in glass,
including wine, which would have frozen and broken outside. The bulkhead
did not go as high as the top of the hut. When the contents of a case
were wanted, a side of the box was taken out, and the empty case then
formed a shelf.

We started to live in the hut on January 18, beautifully warm, the
gramophone going, and everybody happy. But for a long time before this
most of the landing party had been living in tents on shore. It was very
comfortable, far more so than might be supposed, judging only by the
popular idea of a polar life. We were now almost landed, there were just
a few things more to come over from the ship. "It was blowing a mild
blizzard from the south, and I took a sledge over to the ship, which was
quite blotted out in blinding snow at times. It was as hard to get an
empty sledge over, as generally it is to drag a full one. Tea on the
ship, which was very full of welcome, but also very full of the
superiority of their own comforts over those of the land. Their own
comforts were not so very obvious, since they had tried to get the stove
in the wardroom going for the first time. They were all coughing in the
smoke, and everything inside was covered with smuts."
^[101]

The hut itself was some twelve feet above the sea, and situated upon what
was now an almost sandy beach of black lava. It was thought that this was
high enough to be protected from any swell likely to arrive in such a
sheltered place, but, as we shall see, Scott was very anxious as to the
fate of the hut, when, on the Depôt journey, a swell removed not only
miles of sea-ice and a good deal of Barrier, but also the end of Glacier
Tongue. We never saw this beach again, for the autumn gales covered it
with thick drifts of snow, and the thaw was never enough to remove this
for the two other summers we spent here. There is no doubt this was an
exceptional year for thaw. We never again saw a little waterfall such as
was now tumbling down the rocks from Skua Lake into the sea.

The little hill of 66 feet high behind us was soon named Wind Vane Hill,
and there were other meteorological instruments there besides. A
snow-drift or ice-drift always forms to leeward of any such projection,
and that beneath this hill was large enough for us to drive into it two
ice caves. The first of these was to contain our larder, notably the
frozen mutton carcasses brought down by us from New Zealand in the
ice-house on deck. These, however, showed signs of mildew, and we never
ate very freely of them. Seal and penguin were our stock meat foods, and
mutton was considered to be a luxury.

The second cave, 13 feet long by 5 feet wide, hollowed out by Simpson and
Wright, was for the magnetic instruments. The temperature of these caves
was found to be fairly constant. Unfortunately, this was the only drift
into which we could tunnel, and we had no such mass of snow and ice as is
afforded by the Barrier, which can be burrowed, and was burrowed
extensively by Amundsen and his men.

The cases containing the bulk of our stores were placed in stacks
arranged by Bowers up on the sloping ground to the west of the hut,
beginning close to the entrance door. The sledges lay on the hill side
above them. This arrangement was very satisfactory during the first
winter, but the excessive blizzards of the second winter and the immense
amount of snow which was gathering about the camp caused us to move
everything up to the top of the ridge behind the hut where the wind kept
them more clear. Amundsen found it advisable to put his cases in two long
lines.
^[102]

The dogs were tethered to a long chain or rope. The ponies' stable was
built against the northern side of the hut, and was thus sheltered from
the blizzards which always blow here from the south. Against the south
side of the hut Bowers built himself a store-room. "Every day he
conceives or carries out some plan to benefit the camp."
^[103]

"Scott seems very cheery about things," I find in my diary about this
time. And well he might be. A man could hardly be better served. We
slaved until we were nearly dead-beat, and then we found something else
to do until we were quite dead-beat. Ship's company and landing parties
alike, not only now but all through this job, did their very utmost, and
their utmost was very good. The way men worked was fierce.

"If you can picture our house nestling below this small hill on a long
stretch of black sand, with many tons of provision cases ranged in neat
blocks in front of it and the sea lapping the ice-foot below, you will
have some idea of our immediate vicinity. As for our wider surroundings
it would be difficult to describe their beauty in sufficiently glowing
terms. Cape Evans is one of the many spurs of Erebus and the one that
stands closest under the mountain, so that always towering above us we
have the grand snowy peak with its smoking summit. North and south of us
are deep bays, beyond which great glaciers come rippling over the lower
slopes to thrust high blue-walled snouts into the sea. The sea is blue
before us, dotted with shining bergs or ice floes, whilst far over the
Sound, yet so bold and magnificent as to appear near, stand the beautiful
Western Mountains with their numerous lofty peaks, their deep glacial
valley and clear cut scarps, a vision of mountain scenery that can have
few rivals."
^[104]

"Before I left England people were always telling me the Antarctic must
be dull without much life. Now we are in ourselves a perfect farmyard.
There are nineteen ponies fifty yards off and thirty dogs just behind,
and they howl like the wolves they are at intervals, led by Dyk. The
skuas are nesting all round and fighting over the remains of the seals
which we have killed, and the penguins which the dogs have killed,
whenever they have got the chance. The collie bitch which we have
brought down for breeding purposes wanders about the camp. A penguin is
standing outside my tent, presumably because he thinks he is going to
moult here. A seal has just walked up into the horse lines—there are
plenty of Weddell and penguins and whales. On board we have Nigger and a
blue Persian kitten, with rabbits and squirrels. The whole place teems
with life.

"Franky Drake is employed all day wandering round for ice for watering
the ship. Yesterday he had made a pile out on the floe, and the men
wanted to have a flag put on it, and have it photographed, and called
'Mr. Drake's Furthest South.'"
^[105]

January 25 was fixed as the day upon which twelve of us, with eight
ponies and the two dog-teams, were to start south to lay a depôt upon the
Barrier for the Polar Journey. Scott was of opinion that the bays between
us and the Hut Point Peninsula would freeze over in March, probably early
in March, and that we should most of us get back to Cape Evans then. At
the same time the ponies could not come down over the cliffs of this
tongue of land, and preparations had to be made for a lengthy stay at Hut
Point for them and their keepers. For this purpose Scott meant to use the
old Discovery hut at Hut Point.
^[106]

On January 15 he took Meares and one dog-team, and started for Hut Point,
which was fifteen statute miles to the south of us. They crossed Glacier
Tongue, finding upon it a depôt of compressed fodder and maize which had
been left by Shackleton. The open water to the west nearly reached the
Tongue.

On arrival at the hut Scott was shocked to find it full of snow and ice.
This was serious, and, as we found afterwards the drifted snow had thawed
down into ice: the whole of the inside of this hut was a big ice block.
In the middle of this ice was a pile of cases left by the Discovery as a
depôt. They were, we knew, full of biscuit.

"There was something too depressing in finding the old hut in such a
desolate condition. I had had so much interest in seeing all the old
landmarks and the huts apparently intact. To camp outside and feel that
all the old comforts and cheer had departed was dreadfully
heartrending."
^[107]

That night "we slept badly till the morning and, therefore, late. After
breakfast we went up the hills; there was a keen S.E. breeze, but the sun
shone and my spirits revived. There was very much less snow everywhere
than I had ever seen. The ski run was completely cut through in two
places, the Gap and Observation Hill almost bare, a great bare slope on
the side of Arrival Heights, and on top of Crater Heights an immense bare
table-land. How delighted we should have been to see it like this in the
old days! The pond was thawed and the confervae green in fresh water. The
hole which we had dug in the mound in the pond was still there, as Meares
discovered by falling into it up to his waist, and getting very wet.

"On the south side we could see the pressure ridges beyond Pram Point as
of old—Horseshoe Bay calm and unpressed—the sea-ice pressed on Pram
Point and along the Gap ice front, and a new ridge running around C.
Armitage about 2 miles off. We saw Ferrar's old thermometer tubes
standing out of the snow slope as though they'd been placed yesterday.
Vince's cross might have been placed yesterday—the paint was so fresh
and the inscription so legible."
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