The Worst Journey in the World (52 page)

I have put these personal experiences down from my diary because they are
the only contemporary record I possess. Scott's own diary at this time
contains the statement: "The Crozier party returned last night after
enduring for five weeks the hardest conditions on record. They looked
more weather-worn than any one I have yet seen. Their faces were scarred
and wrinkled, their eyes dull, their hands whitened and creased with the
constant exposure to damp and cold, yet the scars of frost-bite were
very few ... to-day after a night's rest our travellers are very
different in appearance and mental capacity."
^[163]

"Atch has been lost in a blizzard," was the news which we got as soon as
we could grasp anything. Since then he has spent a year of war in the
North Sea, seen the Dardanelles campaign, and much fighting in France,
and has been blown up in a monitor. I doubt whether he does not reckon
that night the worst of the lot. He ought to have been blown into
hundreds of little bits, but always like some hardy indiarubber ball he
turns up again, a little dented, but with the same tough elasticity which
refuses to be hurt. And with the same quiet voice he volunteers for the
next, and tells you how splendid everybody was except himself.

It was the blizzard of July 4, when we were lying in the windless bight
on our way to Cape Crozier, and we knew it must be blowing all round us.
At any rate it was blowing at Cape Evans, though it eased up in the
afternoon, and Atkinson and Taylor went up the Ramp to read the
thermometers there. They returned without great difficulty, and some
discussion seems to have arisen as to whether it was possible to read the
two screens on the sea-ice. Atkinson said he would go and read that in
North Bay: Gran said he was going to South Bay. They started
independently at 5.30 P.M. Gran returned an hour and a quarter
afterwards. He had gone about two hundred yards.

Atkinson had not gone much farther when he decided that he had better
give it up, so he turned and faced the wind, steering by keeping it on
his cheek. We discovered afterwards that the wind does not blow quite in
the same direction at the end of the Cape as it does just where the hut
lies. Perhaps it was this, perhaps his left leg carried him a little
farther than his right, perhaps it was that the numbing effect of a
blizzard on a man's brain was already having its effect, certainly
Atkinson does not know himself, but instead of striking the Cape which
ran across his true front, he found himself by an old fish trap which he
knew was 200 yards out on the sea-ice. He made a great effort to steady
himself and make for the Cape, but any one who has stood in a blizzard
will understand how difficult that is. The snow was a blanket raging all
round him, and it was quite dark. He walked on, and found nothing.

Everything else is vague. Hour after hour he staggered about: he got his
hand badly frost-bitten: he found pressure: he fell over it: he was
crawling in it, on his hands and knees. Stumbling, tumbling, tripping,
buffeted by the endless lash of the wind, sprawling through miles of
punishing snow, he still seems to have kept his brain working. He found
an island, thought it was Inaccessible, spent ages in coasting along it,
lost it, found more pressure, and crawled along it. He found another
island, and the same horrible, almost senseless, search went on. Under
the lee of some rocks he waited for a time. His clothing was thin though
he had his wind-clothes, and, a horrible thought if this was to go on, he
had boots on his feet instead of warm finnesko. Here also he kicked out a
hole in a drift where he might have more chance if he were forced to lie
down. For sleep is the end of men who get lost in blizzards. Though he
did not know it he must now have been out more than four hours.

There was little chance for him if the blizzard continued, but hope
revived when the moon showed in a partial lull. It is wonderful that he
was sufficiently active to grasp the significance of this, and groping
back in his brain he found he could remember the bearing of the moon from
Cape Evans when he went to bed the night before. The hut must be
somewhere over there: this must be Inaccessible Island! He left the
island and made in that direction, but the blizzard came down again with
added force and the moon was blotted out. He tried to return to the
island and failed: then he stumbled on another island, perhaps the same
one, and waited. Again the lull came, and again he set off, and walked
and walked, until he recognized Inaccessible Island on his left. Clearly
he must have been under Great Razorback Island and this is some four
miles from Cape Evans. The moon still showed, and on he walked and then
at last he saw a flame.

Atkinson's continued absence was not noticed at the hut until dinner was
nearly over at 7.15; that is, until he had been absent about two hours.
The wind at Cape Evans had dropped though it was thick all round, and no
great anxiety was felt: some went out and shouted, others went north with
a lantern, and Day arranged to light a paraffin flare on Wind Vane Hill.
Atkinson never experienced this lull, and having seen the way blizzards
will sweep down the Strait though the coastline is comparatively clear
and calm, I can understand how he was in the thick of it all the time. I
feel convinced that most of these blizzards are local affairs. The party
which had gone north returned at 9.30 without news, and Scott became
seriously alarmed. Between 9.30 and 10 six search parties started out.
But time was passing and Atkinson had been away more than six hours.

The light which Atkinson had seen was a flare of tow soaked in petrol lit
by Day at Cape Evans. He corrected his course and before long was under
the rock upon which Day could be seen working like some lanky devil in
one of Dante's hells. Atkinson shouted again and again but could not
attract his attention, and finally walked almost into the hut before he
was found by two men searching the Cape. "It was all my own damned
fault," he said, "but Scott never slanged me at all." I really think we
should all have been as merciful! Wouldn't
you
?

And that was that: but he had a beastly hand.

Theoretically the sun returned to us on August 23. Practically there was
nothing to be seen except blinding drift. But we saw his upper limb two
days later. In Scott's words the daylight came "rushing" at us. Two
spring journeys were contemplated; and with preparations for the Polar
Journey, and the ordinary routine work of the station, everybody had as
much on his hands as he could get through.

Lieutenant Evans, Gran and Forde volunteered to go out to Corner Camp and
dig out this depôt as well as that of Safety Camp. They started on
September 9 and camped on the sea-ice beyond Cape Armitage that night,
the minimum temperature being -45°. They dug out Safety Camp next
morning, and marched on towards Corner Camp. The minimum that night was
-62.3°. The next evening they made their night camp as a blizzard was
coming up, the temperature at the same time being -34.5° and minimum for
the night -40°. This is an extremely low temperature for a blizzard. They
made a start in a very cold wind the next afternoon (September 12) and
camped at 8.30 P.M. That night was bitterly cold and they found that the
minimum showed -73.3° for that night. Evans reports adversely on the use
of the eider-down bag and inner tent, but here none of our Winter Journey
men would agree with him.
^[164]
Most of September 13th was spent in
digging out Corner Camp which they left at 5 P.M., intending to travel
back to Hut Point without stopping except for meals. They marched all
through that night with two halts for meals and arrived at Hut Point at 3
P.M. on September 14, having covered a distance of 34.6 statute miles.
They reached Cape Evans the following day after an absence of 6½
days.
^[165]

During this journey Forde got his hand badly frost-bitten which
necessitated his return in the Terra Nova in March 1912. He owed a good
deal to the skilful treatment Atkinson gave it.

Wilson was still looking grey and drawn some days, and I was not too fit,
but Bowers was indefatigable. Soon after we got in from Cape Crozier he
heard that Scott was going over to the Western Mountains: somehow or
other he persuaded Scott to take him, and they started with Seaman Evans
and Simpson on September 15 on what Scott calls "a remarkably pleasant
and instructive little spring journey,"
^[166]
and what Bowers called a
jolly picnic.

This picnic started from the hut in a -40° temperature, dragging 180 lbs.
per man, mainly composed of stores for the geological party of the
summer. They penetrated as far north as Dunlop Island and turned back
from there on September 24, reaching Cape Evans on September 29, marching
twenty-one miles (statute) into a blizzard wind with occasional storms of
drift and a temperature of -16°: and they marched a little too long; for
a storm of drift came against them and they had to camp. It is never very
easy pitching a tent on sea-ice because there is not very much snow on
the ice: on this occasion it was only after they had detached the inner
tent, which was fastened to the bamboos, that they could hold the
bamboos, and then it was only inch by inch that they got the outer cover
on. At 9 P.M. the drift took off though the wind was as strong as ever,
and they decided to make for Cape Evans. They arrived at 1.15 A.M. after
one of the most strenuous days which Scott could remember: and that meant
a good deal. Simpson's face was a sight! During his absence Griffith
Taylor became meteorologist-in-chief. He was a greedy scientist, and he
also wielded a fluent pen. Consequently his output during the year and a
half which he spent with us was large, and ranged from the results of the
two excellent scientific journeys which he led in the Western Mountains,
to this work during the latter half of September. He was a most valued
contributor to The South Polar Times, and his prose and poetry both had a
bite which was never equalled by any other of our amateur journalists.
When his pen was still, his tongue wagged, and the arguments he led were
legion. The hut was a merrier place for his presence. When the weather
was good he might be seen striding over the rocks with a complete
disregard of the effect on his clothes: he wore through a pair of boots
quicker than anybody I have ever known, and his socks had to be mended
with string. Ice movement and erosion were also of interest to him, and
almost every day he spent some time in studying the slopes and huge
ice-cliffs of the Barne Glacier, and other points of interest. With equal
ferocity he would throw himself into his curtained bunk because he was
bored, or emerge from it to take part in some argument which was
troubling the table. His diary must have been almost as long as the
reports he wrote for Scott of his geological explorations. He was a
demon note-taker, and he had a passion for being equipped so that he
could cope with any observation which might turn up. Thus Old Griff on a
sledge journey might have notebooks protruding from every pocket, and
hung about his person, a sundial, a prismatic compass, a sheath knife, a
pair of binoculars, a geological hammer, chronometer, pedometer, camera,
aneroid and other items of surveying gear, as well as his goggles and
mitts. And in his hand might be an ice-axe which he used as he went along
to the possible advancement of science, but the certain disorganization
of his companions.

His gaunt, untamed appearance was atoned for by a halo of good-fellowship
which hovered about his head. I am sure he must have been an untidy
person to have in your tent: I feel equally sure that his tent-mates
would have been sorry to lose him. His gear took up more room than was
strictly his share, and his mind also filled up a considerable amount of
space. He always bulked large, and when he returned to the Australian
Government, which had lent him for the first two sledging seasons, he
left a noticeable gap in our company.

From the time we returned from Cape Crozier until now Scott had been full
of buck. Our return had taken a weight off his mind: the return of the
daylight was stimulating to everybody: and to a man of his impatient and
impetuous temperament the end of the long period of waiting was a relief.
Also everything was going well. On September 10 he writes with a sigh of
relief that the detailed plans for the Southern Journey are finished at
last. "Every figure has been checked by Bowers, who has been an enormous
help to me. If the motors are successful, we shall have no difficulty in
getting to the Glacier, and if they fail, we shall still get there with
any ordinary degree of good fortune. To work three units of four men from
that point onwards requires no small provision, but with the proper
provision it should take a good deal to stop the attainment of our
object. I have tried to take every reasonable possibility of misfortune
into consideration, and to so organize the parties as to be prepared to
meet them. I fear to be too sanguine, yet taking everything into
consideration I feel that our chances ought to be good."
^[167]

And again he writes: "Of hopeful signs for the future none are more
remarkable than the health and spirit of our people. It would be
impossible to imagine a more vigorous community, and there does not seem
to be a single weak spot in the twelve good men and true who are chosen
for the Southern advance. All are now experienced sledge travellers, knit
together with a bond of friendship that has never been equalled under
such circumstances. Thanks to these people, and more especially to Bowers
and Petty Officer Evans, there is not a single detail of our equipment
which is not arranged with the utmost care and in accordance with the
tests of experience."
^[168]

Indeed Bowers had been of the very greatest use to Scott in the working
out of these plans. Not only had he all the details of stores at his
finger-tips, but he had studied polar clothing and polar food, was full
of plans and alternative plans, and, best of all, refused to be beaten by
any problem which presented itself. The actual distribution of weights
between dogs, motors and ponies, and between the different ponies, was
largely left in his hands. We had only to lead our ponies out on the day
of the start and we were sure to find our sledges ready, each with the
right load and weight. To the leader of an expedition such a man was
worth his weight in gold.