The Worst Journey in the World (50 page)

Working with our woollen half-mitts and mitts on our hands all the time,
and our fur mitts over them when possible, we gradually got the buckles
undone, and spread the green canvas floor-cloth on the snow. This was
also fitted to be used as a sail, but we never could have rigged a sail
on this journey. The shovel and the bamboos, with a lining, itself lined
with ice, lashed to them, were packed on the top of the load and were now
put on the snow until wanted. Our next job was to lift our three
sleeping-bags one by one on to the floor-cloth: they covered it, bulging
over the sides—those obstinate coffins which were all our life to us....
One of us is off by now to nurse his fingers back. The cooker was
unlashed from the top of the instrument box; some parts of it were put on
the bags with the primus, methylated spirit can, matches and so forth;
others left to be filled with snow later. Taking a pole in each hand we
three spread the bamboos over the whole. "All right? Down!" from Bill;
and we lowered them gently on to the soft snow, that they might not sink
too far. The ice on the inner lining of the tent was formed mostly from
the steam of the cooker. This we had been unable to beat or chip off in
the past, and we were now, truth to tell, past worrying about it. The
little ventilator in the top, made to let out this steam, had been tied
up in order to keep in all possible heat. Then over with the outer cover,
and for one of us the third worst job of the day was to begin. The worst
job was to get into our bags: the second or equal worst was to lie in
them for six hours (we had brought it down to six): this third worst was,
to get the primus lighted and a meal on the way.

As cook of the day you took the broken metal framework, all that remained
of our candlestick, and got yourself with difficulty into the funnel
which formed the door. The enclosed space of the tent seemed much colder
than the outside air: you tried three or four match-boxes and no match
would strike: almost desperate, you asked for a new box to be given you
from the sledge and got a light from this because it had not yet been in
the warmth, so called, of the tent. The candle hung by a wire from the
cap of the tent. It would be tedious to tell of the times we had getting
the primus alight, and the lanyards of the weekly food bag unlashed.
Probably by now the other two men have dug in the tent; squared up
outside; filled and passed in the cooker; set the thermometer under the
sledge and so forth. There were always one or two odd jobs which wanted
doing as well: but you may be sure they came in as soon as possible when
they heard the primus hissing, and saw the glow of light inside. Birdie
made a bottom for the cooker out of an empty biscuit tin to take the
place of the part which was blown away. On the whole this was a success,
but we had to hold it steady—on Bill's sleeping-bag, for the flat frozen
bags spread all over the floor space. Cooking was a longer business now.
Some one whacked out the biscuit, and the cook put the ration of pemmican
into the inner cooker which was by now half full of water. As opportunity
offered we got out of our day, and into our night foot-gear—fleecy
camel-hair stockings and fur boots. In the dim light we examined our feet
for frost-bite.

I do not think it took us less than an hour to get a hot meal to our
lips: pemmican followed by hot water in which we soaked our biscuits. For
lunch we had tea and biscuits: for breakfast, pemmican, biscuits and tea.
We could not have managed more food bags—three were bad enough, and the
lashings of everything were like wire. The lashing of the tent door,
however, was the worst, and it
had
to be tied tightly, especially if it
was blowing. In the early days we took great pains to brush rime from the
tent before packing it up, but we were long past that now.

The hoosh got down into our feet: we nursed back frost-bites: and we were
all the warmer for having got our dry foot-gear on before supper. Then we
started to get into our bags.

Birdie's bag fitted him beautifully, though perhaps it would have been a
little small with an eider-down inside. He must have had a greater heat
supply than other men; for he never had serious trouble with his feet,
while ours were constantly frost-bitten: he slept, I should be afraid to
say how much, longer than we did, even in these last days: it was a
pleasure, lying awake practically all night, to hear his snores. He
turned his bag inside out from fur to skin, and skin to fur, many times
during the journey, and thus got rid of a lot of moisture which came
out as snow or actual knobs of ice. When we did turn our bags the only
way was to do so directly we turned out, and even then you had to be
quick before the bag froze. Getting out of the tent at night it was quite
a race to get back to your bag before it hardened. Of course this was in
the lowest temperatures.

We could not burn our bags and we tried putting the lighted primus into
them to thaw them out, but this was not very successful. Before this
time, when it was very cold, we lighted the primus in the morning while
we were still in our bags: and in the evening we kept it going until we
were just getting or had got the mouths of our bags levered open. But
returning we had no oil for such luxuries, until the last day or two.

I do not believe that any man, however sick he is, has a much worse time
than we had in those bags, shaking with cold until our backs would almost
break. One of the added troubles which came to us on our return was the
sodden condition of our hands in our bags at night. We had to wear our
mitts and half-mitts, and they were as wet as they could be: when we got
up in the morning we had washer-women's hands—white, crinkled, sodden.
That was an unhealthy way to start the day's work. We really wanted some
bags of saennegrass for hands as well as feet; one of the blessings of
that kind of bag being that you can shake the moisture from it: but we
only had enough for our wretched feet.

The horrors of that return journey are blurred to my memory and I know
they were blurred to my body at the time. I think this applies to all of
us, for we were much weakened and callous. The day we got down to the
penguins I had not cared whether I fell into a crevasse or not. We had
been through a great deal since then. I know that we slept on the march;
for I woke up when I bumped against Birdie, and Birdie woke when he
bumped against me. I think Bill steering out in front managed to keep
awake. I know we fell asleep if we waited in the comparatively warm tent
when the primus was alight—with our pannikins or the primus in our
hands. I know that our sleeping-bags were so full of ice that we did not
worry if we spilt water or hoosh over them as they lay on the
floor-cloth, when we cooked on them with our maimed cooker. They were so
bad that we never rolled them up in the usual way when we got out of them
in the morning: we opened their mouths as much as possible before they
froze, and hoisted them more or less flat on to the sledge. All three of
us helped to raise each bag, which looked rather like a squashed coffin
and was probably a good deal harder. I know that if it was only -40° when
we camped for the night we considered quite seriously that we were going
to have a warm one, and that when we got up in the morning if the
temperature was in the minus sixties we did not enquire what it was. The
day's march was bliss compared to the night's rest, and both were awful.
We were about as bad as men can be and do good travelling: but I never
heard a word of complaint, nor, I believe, an oath, and I saw
self-sacrifice standing every test.

Always we were getting nearer home: and we were doing good marches. We
were going to pull through; it was only a matter of sticking this for a
few more days; six, five, four ... three perhaps now, if we were not
blizzed. Our main hut was behind that ridge where the mist was always
forming and blowing away, and there was Castle Rock: we might even see
Observation Hill to-morrow, and the Discovery Hut furnished and trim was
behind it, and they would have sent some dry sleeping-bags from Cape
Evans to greet us there. We reckoned our troubles over at the Barrier
edge, and assuredly it was not far away. "You've got it in the neck,
stick it, you've got it in the neck"—it was always running in my head.

And we
did
stick it. How good the memories of those days are. With
jokes about Birdie's picture hat: with songs we remembered off the
gramophone: with ready words of sympathy for frost-bitten feet: with
generous smiles for poor jests: with suggestions of happy beds to come.
We did not forget the Please and Thank you, which mean much in such
circumstances, and all the little links with decent civilization which
we could still keep going. I'll swear there was still a grace about us
when we staggered in. And we kept our tempers—even with God.

We
might
reach Hut Point to-night: we were burning more oil now, that
one-gallon tin had lasted us well: and burning more candle too; at one
time we feared they would give out. A hell of a morning we had: -57° in
our present state. But it was calm, and the Barrier edge could not be
much farther now. The surface was getting harder: there were a few
wind-blown furrows, the crust was coming up to us. The sledge was
dragging easier: we always suspected the Barrier sloped downwards
hereabouts. Now the hard snow was on the surface, peeping out like great
inverted basins on which we slipped, and our feet became warmer for not
sinking into soft snow. Suddenly we saw a gleam of light in a line of
darkness running across our course. It was the Barrier edge: we were all
right now.

We ran the sledge off a snow-drift on to the sea-ice, with the same cold
stream of air flowing down it which wrecked my hands five weeks ago:
pushed out of this, camped and had a meal: the temperature had already
risen to -43°. We could almost feel it getting warmer as we went round
Cape Armitage on the last three miles. We managed to haul our sledge up
the ice foot, and dug the drift away from the door. The old hut struck us
as fairly warm.

Bill was convinced that we ought not to go into the warm hut at Cape
Evans when we arrived there—to-morrow night! We ought to get back to
warmth gradually, live in a tent outside, or in the annexe for a day or
two. But I'm sure we never meant to do it. Just now Hut Point did not
prejudice us in favour of such abstinence. It was just as we had left it:
there was nothing sent down for us there—no sleeping-bags, nor sugar:
but there was plenty of oil. Inside the hut we pitched a dry tent left
there since Depôt Journey days, set two primuses going in it; sat dozing
on our bags; and drank cocoa without sugar so thick that next morning we
were gorged with it. We were very happy, falling asleep between each
mouthful, and after several hours discussed schemes of not getting into
our bags at all. But some one would have to keep the primus going to
prevent frost-bite, and we could not trust ourselves to keep awake. Bill
and I tried to sing a part-song. Finally we sopped our way into our bags.
We only stuck
them
three hours, and thankfully turned out at 3 A.M.,
and were ready to pack up when we heard the wind come away. It was no
good, so we sat in our tent and dozed again. The wind dropped at 9.30: we
were off at 11. We walked out into what seemed to us a blaze of light. It
was not until the following year that I understood that a great part of
such twilight as there is in the latter part of the winter was cut off
from us by the mountains under which we travelled. Now, with nothing
between us and the northern horizon below which lay the sun, we saw as we
had not seen for months, and the iridescent clouds that day were
beautiful.

We just pulled for all we were worth and did nearly two miles an hour:
for two miles a baddish salt surface, then big undulating hard sastrugi
and good going. We slept as we walked. We had done eight miles by 4 P.M.
and were past Glacier Tongue. We lunched there.

As we began to gather our gear together to pack up for the last time,
Bill said quietly, "I want to thank you two for what you have done. I
couldn't have found two better companions—and what is more I never
shall."

I am proud of that.

Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as
it sounds. But this journey had beggared our language: no words could
express its horror.

We trudged on for several more hours and it grew very dark. There was a
discussion as to where Cape Evans lay. We rounded it at last: it must
have been ten or eleven o'clock, and it was possible that some one might
see us as we pulled towards the hut. "Spread out well," said Bill, "and
they will be able to see that there are three men." But we pulled along
the cape, over the tide-crack, up the bank to the very door of the hut
without a sound. No noise from the stable, nor the bark of a dog from the
snowdrifts above us. We halted and stood there trying to get ourselves
and one another out of our frozen harnesses—the usual long job. The door
opened—"Good God! here is the Crozier Party," said a voice, and
disappeared.

Thus ended the worst journey in the world.

And now the reader will ask what became of the three penguins' eggs for
which three human lives had been risked three hundred times a day, and
three human frames strained to the utmost extremity of human endurance.

Let us leave the Antarctic for a moment and conceive ourselves in the
year 1913 in the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. I had
written to say that I would bring the eggs at this time. Present, myself,
C.-G., the sole survivor of the three, with First or Doorstep Custodian
of the Sacred Eggs. I did not take a verbatim report of his welcome; but
the spirit of it may be dramatized as follows:

FIRST CUSTODIAN. Who are you? What do you want? This ain't an egg-shop.
What call have you to come meddling with our eggs? Do you want me to put
the police on to you? Is it the crocodile's egg you're after? I don't
know nothing about 'no eggs. You'd best speak to Mr. Brown: it's him that
varnishes the eggs.