The Worst Journey in the World (33 page)

The relief party arrived on April 18: "We had spent such a happy week,
just the seven of us, at the Discovery hut that I think, glad as we were
to see the men, we would most of us have rather been left undisturbed,
and I expected that it would mean that we should have to move homewards,
as it turned out.

"Meares is to be left in charge of the party which remains, namely Forde
and Keohane of the old stagers, and Nelson, Day, Lashly and Dimitri of
the new-comers. He is very amusing with the stores and is evidently
afraid that the food which has just been brought in (sugar, self-raising
flour, chocolate, etc.) will all be eaten up by those who have brought
it. So we have dampers without butter, and a minimum of chocolate.

"Tuesday and Tuesday night was one of our few still, cold days, nearly
minus thirty. The sea northwards from Hut Point, whence the ice had
previously all gone out, froze nearly five inches by Wednesday mid-day,
when we got three more seal. Scott was evidently thinking that on
Thursday, when we were to start, we might go by the sea-ice all the
way—when suddenly with no warning it silently floated out to sea."
^[128]

The following two teams travelled to Cape Evans via the Hutton Cliffs on
April 21: 1st team Scott, Wilson, Atkinson, Crean; 2nd team Bowers,
Oates, Cherry-Garrard, Hooper. It was blowing hard, as usual, at the
Hutton Cliffs, and we got rather frost-bitten when lowering the sledges
on to the sea-ice. The sun was leaving us for the next four months, but
luckily the light just lasted for this operation, though not for the
subsequent meal which we hastily ate under the cliffs, nor for the
crossing of Glacier Tongue. Bowers wrote home:

"I had the lighter team and, knowing what a flier Captain Scott is I took
care to have the new sledge myself. Our weights were nothing and the
difference was only in the sledge runners, but it made all the difference
to us that day. Scott fairly legged it, as I expected, and we came along
gaily behind him. He could not understand it when the pace began to tell
more on his heavy team than on us. After lowering down the sledges over
the cliffs we recovered the rope we had left in the first place, and then
struck out over the sea-ice. Then our good runners told so much that I
owned up to mine being the better sledge, and offered to give them one of
my team. This was declined, but after we crossed the Tongue Captain Scott
said he would like to change sledges at the Little Razorback. At any time
over this stretch we could have run away from his team, and once they got
our sledge they started that game on us. We expected it, and never had I
stepped out so hard before. We had been marching hard for nearly 12 hours
and now we had two miles' spurt to do, and we should have stuck it, bad
runners and all, had we had smooth ice. As it was we struck a belt of
rough ice, and in the dark we all stumbled and I went down a whack, that
nearly knocked me out. This was not noticed fortunately, and still we
hung on to the end of their sledge while I turned hot and cold and
sick and went through the various symptoms before I got my equilibrium
back, which I fortunately did while legging it at full speed. They
started to go ahead soon after that though, and we could not hold our
own, although we were close to the cape. I had the same thing happen
again after another fall but we stuck it round the cape and arrived only
about 50 yards behind. I have never felt so done, and so was my team. Of
course we need not have raced, but we did, and I would do the same thing
every time. Titus produced a mug of brandy he had sharked from the ship
and we all lapped it up with avidity. The other team were just about laid
out, too, so I don't think there was much to be said either way."
^[129]

Two days later the sun appeared for the last time for four months.

Looking back I realized two things. That sledging, at any rate in summer
and autumn, was a much less terrible ordeal than my imagination had
painted it, and that those Hut Point days would prove some of the
happiest in my life. Just enough to eat and keep us warm, no more—no
frills nor trimmings: there is many a worse and more elaborate life. The
necessaries of civilization were luxuries to us: and as Priestley found
under circumstances compared to which our life at Hut Point was a Sunday
School treat, the luxuries of civilization satisfy only those wants which
they themselves create.

The highest object that human beings can set before themselves is
not the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the
unknown; it is simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its
boundaries a little further from our little sphere of
action.—HUXLEY.

And so we came back to our comfortable hut. Whatever merit there may be
in going to the Antarctic, once there you must not credit yourself for
being there. To spend a year in the hut at Cape Evans because you explore
is no more laudable than to spend a month at Davos because you have
consumption, or to spend an English winter at the Berkeley Hotel. It is
just the most comfortable thing and the easiest thing to do under the
circumstances.

In our case the best thing was not at all bad, for the hut, as Arctic
huts go, was as palatial as is the Ritz, as hotels go. Whatever the
conditions of darkness, cold and wind, might be outside, there was
comfort and warmth and good cheer within.

And there was a mass of work to be done, as well as at least two journeys
of the first magnitude ahead.

When Scott first sat down at his little table at Winter Quarters to start
working out a most complicated scheme of weights and averages for the
Southern Journey, his thoughts were gloomy, I know. "This is the end of
the Pole," he said to me, when he pulled us off the bergs after the
sea-ice had broken up; the loss of six ponies out of the eight with which
we started the Depôt Journey, the increasing emaciation and weakness of
the pony transport as we travelled farther on the Barrier, the arrival
of the dogs after their rapid journey home, starved rakes which looked as
though they were absolutely done—these were not cheerful recollections
with which to start to plan a journey of eighteen hundred miles.

On the other hand, we had ten ponies left, though two or three of them
were of more than doubtful quality; and it was obvious that considerable
improvement could and must be made in the feeding of both ponies and
dogs. With regard to the dogs the remedy was plain; their ration was too
small. With regard to the ponies the question was not so simple. One of
the main foods for the ponies which we had brought was compressed fodder
in the shape of bales. Theoretically this fodder was excellent food
value, and was made of wheat which was cut green and pressed. Whether it
was really wheat or not I do not know, but there could be no two opinions
about its nourishing qualities for our ponies. When fed upon it they lost
weight until they were just skin and bone. Poor beasts! It was pitiful to
see them.

In Oates we had a man who had forgotten as much as most men know about
horses. It was no fault of his that this fodder was inadequate, nor that
we had lost so many of the best ponies which we had. Oates had always
been for taking the worst ponies out on the Depôt Journey: travelling as
far on to the Barrier as they could go, and there killing them and
depôting their flesh. Now Oates took the ten remaining ponies into his
capable hands. Some of them were scarecrows, especially poor Jehu, who
was never expected to start at all, and ended by gallantly pulling his
somewhat diminished load eight marches beyond One Ton Camp, a distance of
238 miles. Another, Christopher, was a man-killer if ever a horse was; he
had to be thrown in order to attach him to the sledge; to the end he
would lay out any man who was rash enough to give him the chance; once
started, and it took four men to achieve this, it was impossible to halt
him during the day's march, and so Oates and his three tent mates and
their ponies had to go without any lunch meal for 130 miles of the
Southern Journey.

Oates trained them and fed them as though they were to run in the Derby.
They were exercised whenever possible throughout the winter and spring by
those who were to lead them on the actual journey. Fresh and good food
was found in the shape of oilcake and oats, a limited quantity of each of
which had been brought and was saved for the actual Polar Journey, and
everything which care and foresight could devise was done to save them
discomfort. It is a grim life for animals, but in the end we were to know
that up to the time of that bad blizzard almost at the Glacier Gateway,
which was the finishing post of these plucky animals, they had fed all
they needed, slept as well and lived as well as any, and better than most
horses in ordinary life at home. "I congratulate you, Titus," said
Wilson, as we stood under the shadow of Mount Hope, with the ponies' task
accomplished, and "I thank you," said Scott.

Titus grunted and was pleased.

Transport difficulties for the Polar Journey were considerable, but in
every other direction the outlook was bright. The men who were to do the
sledging had been away from Winter Quarters for three months. They had
had plenty of sledging experience, some of it none too soft. The sledges,
clothing, man-food, and outfit generally were excellent, although some
changes were suggested and could be put into effect. There was no obvious
means, however, of effecting the improvement most desired, a satisfactory
snow-shoe for the ponies.

The work already accomplished was enormous. On the Polar Journey the
ponies and dogs could now travel light for the first hundred and thirty
geographical miles, when, at One Ton Camp, they would for the first time
take their full loads: the advantage of being able to start again with
full loads when so far on your way is obvious when it is considered that
the distance travelled depends upon the weight of food that can be
carried. During the geological journey on the western side of the Sound,
Taylor and his party had carried out much useful geological work in Dry
Valley and on the Ferrar and Koettlitz Glaciers, which had been
accurately plotted for the charts, and had been examined for the first
time by an expert physiographer and ice specialist. The ordinary routine
of scientific and meteorological observations usual with all Scott's
sledging parties was observed.

Further, at Cape Evans there had been running for more than three months
a scientific station, which rivalled in thoroughness and exactitude any
other such station in the world. I hope that later a more detailed
account may be given of this continuous series of observations, some of
them demanding the most complex mechanism, and all of them watched over
by enthusiastic experts. It must here suffice to say that we who on our
return saw for the first time the hut and its annexes completely equipped
were amazed; though perhaps the gadget which appealed most to us at first
was the electric apparatus by which the cook, whose invention it was,
controlled the rising of his excellent bread.

Glad as we were to find it all and to enjoy the food, bath and comfort
which it offered, we had no illusions about Cape Evans itself. It is
uninteresting, as only a low-lying spit of black lava covered for the
most part with snow, and swept constantly by high winds and drift, can be
uninteresting. The kenyte lava of which it is formed is a remarkable
rock, and is found in few parts of the world: but when you have seen one
bit of kenyte you have seen all. Unlike the spacious and lofty Hut Point
Peninsula, thirteen miles to the south, it has no outstanding hills and
craters; no landmarks such as Castle Rock. Unlike the broad folds of Cape
Royds, six miles to the north, it has none of the rambling walks and
varied lakes, in which is found most of the limited plant life which
exists in these latitudes, and though a few McCormick skuas meet here,
there is no nursery of penguins such as that which makes Cape Royds so
attractive in summer. Nor has the Great Ice Sheet, which reached up
Erebus and spread over the Ross Sea in the past, spilled over Cape Evans
in its retreat a wealth of foreign granites, dolerites, porphyrys and
sandstone such as cover the otherwise dull surface round Shackleton's old
Winter Quarters.

Cape Evans is a low lava flow jutting out some three thousand feet from
the face of the glaciers which clothe the slopes of Erebus. It is roughly
an equilateral triangle in shape, at its base some three thousand feet
(9/16th mile) across. This base-line, which divides the cape from the
slopes of Erebus and the crevassed glaciers and giant ice-falls which
clothe them, consists of a ramp with a slope of thirty degrees, and a
varying height of some 100 to 150 feet. From our hut, four hundred yards
away, it looks like a great embankment behind which rises the majestic
volcano Erebus, with its plume of steam and smoke.

The cape itself does not rise on the average more than thirty feet, and
somewhat resembles the back of a hog with several backbones. The hollows
between the ridges are for the most part filled with snow and ice, while
in one or two places where the accumulation of snow is great enough there
are little glacierets which do not travel far before they ignominiously
peter out. There are two small lakes, called Skua Lake and Island Lake
respectively. There is only one hill which is almost behind the hut, and
is called Wind Vane Hill, for on it were placed one of our wind vanes and
certain other meteorological instruments. Into the glacieret which flowed
down in the lee of this hill we drove two caves, which gave both an even
low temperature and excellent insulation. One of them was therefore used
for our magnetic observations, and the other as an ice-house for the
mutton we had brought from New Zealand.

The north side, upon which we had built our hut, slopes down by way of a
rubbly beach to the sea in North Bay. We knew there was a beach for we
landed upon it, but we never saw it again even in the height of summer,
for the winter blizzards formed an ice foot several feet thick. The other
side of the cape ends abruptly in black bastions and baby cliffs some
thirty feet high. The apex of the triangle which forms as it were the
cape proper is a similar kenyte bluff. The whole makes a tricky place on
which to walk in the dark, for the surface is strewn with boulders of all
sizes and furrowed and channelled by drifts of hard and icy snow, and
quite suddenly you may find yourself prostrate upon a surface of slippery
blue ice. It may be easily imagined that it is no seemly place to
exercise skittish ponies or mules in a cold wind, but there is no other
place when the sea-ice is unsafe.