The Worst Journey in the World (57 page)

Instead of home-life's silken chains,
The uneventful round,
I long to be mid snow-swept plains,
In harness, outward bound.

With the pad, pad, pad, of fin'skoed feet,
With two hundred pounds per man,
Not enough hoosh or biscuit to eat,
Well done, lads! Up tent! Outspan.
(NELSON in
The South Polar Times.
)

Certainly as we skirted these mountains, range upon range, during the
next two marches (November 30 and December 1), we felt we could have
little cause for complaint. They brought us to lat. 82° 47' S., and here
we left our last depôt on the Barrier, called the Southern Barrier Depôt,
with a week's ration for each returning party as usual. "The man food is
enough for one week for each returning unit of four men, the next depôt
beyond being the Middle Barrier Depôt, 73 miles north. As we ought easily
to do over 100 miles a week on the return journey, there is little
likelihood of our having to go on short commons if all goes well."
^[200]
And this was what we all felt—until we found the Polar Party. This was
our twenty-seventh camp, and we had been out a month.

It was important that we should have fine clear weather during the next
few days when we should be approaching the land. On his previous southern
journey Scott had been prevented from reaching the range of mountains
which ran along to our right by a huge chasm. This phenomenon is known to
geologists as a shear crack and is formed by the movement of a glacier
away from the land which bounds it. In this case a mass of many hundred
miles of Barrier has moved away from the mountains, and the disturbance
is correspondingly great. Shackleton has described how he approached the
Gateway, as he named the passage between Mount Hope and the mainland, by
means of which he passed through on to the Beardmore Glacier. As he and
his companions were exploring the way they came upon an enormous chasm,
80 feet wide and 300 feet deep, which barred their path. Moving along to
the right they found a place where the chasm was filled with snow, and
here they crossed to the land some miles ahead. At our Southern Barrier
Depôt we reckoned we were some forty-four miles from this Gateway and in
three more marches we hoped to be camped under this land.

Christopher was shot at the depôt. He was the only pony who did not die
instantaneously. Perhaps Oates was not so calm as usual, for Chris was
his own horse though such a brute. Just as Oates fired he moved, and
charged into the camp with the bullet in his head. He was caught with
difficulty, nearly giving Keohane a bad bite, led back and finished. We
were well rid of him: while he was strong he fought, and once the Barrier
had tamed him, as we were not able to do, he never pulled a fair load. He
could have gone several more days, but there was not enough pony food to
take all the animals forward. We began to wonder if we had done right to
leave so much behind. Each pony provided at least four days' food for the
dog-teams, some of them more, and there was quite a lot of fat on
them—even on Jehu. This was comforting, as going to prove that their
hardships were not too great. Also we put the undercut into our own
hoosh, and it was very good, though we had little oil to cook it.

We had been starting later each night, in order that the transition from
night to day marching might be gradual. For we intended to march by day
when we started pulling up the glacier, and there were no ponies to rest
when the sun was high. It may be said therefore that our next march was
on December 2.

Before we started Scott walked over to Bowers. "I have come to a decision
which will shock you." Victor was to go at the end of the march, because
pony food was running so short. Birdie wrote at the end of the day:—He
"did a splendid march and kept ahead all day, and as usual marched into
camp first, pulling over 450 lbs. easily. It seemed an awful pity to have
to shoot a great strong animal, and it seemed like the irony of fate to
me, as I had been downed for over-provisioning the ponies with needless
excess of food, and the drastic reductions had been made against my
strenuous opposition up to the last. It is poor satisfaction to me to
know that I was right now that my horse is dead. Good old Victor! He has
always had a biscuit out of my ration, and he ate his last before the
bullet sent him to his rest. Here ends my second horse in 83° S., not
quite so tragically as my first when the sea-ice broke up, but none the
less I feel sorry for a beast that has been my constant companion and
care for so long. He has done his share in our undertaking anyhow, and
may I do my share as well when I get into harness myself.

"The snow has started to fall over his bleak resting-place, and it looks
like a blizzard. The outlook is dark, stormy and threatening."

Indeed it had been a dismal march into a blank white wall, and the ponies
were sinking badly in the snow, leaving holes a full foot deep. The
temperature was +17° and the flakes of snow melted when they lay on the
dark colours of the tents and our furs. After building the pony walls
water was running down our windproofs.

I note "we are doing well on pony meat and go to bed very content."
Notwithstanding the fact that we could not do more than heat the meat by
throwing it into the pemmican we found it sweet and good, though tough.
The man-hauling party consisted of Lieut. Evans and Lashly who had lost
their motors, and Atkinson and Wright who had lost their ponies. They
were really quite hungry by now, and most of us pretty well looked
forward to our meals and kept a biscuit to eat in our bags if we could.
The pony meat therefore came as a relief. I think we ought to have
depôted more of it on the cairns. As it was, what we did not eat was
given to the dogs. With some tins of extra oil and a depôted pony the
Polar Party would probably have got home in safety.

On December 3 we roused out at 2.30 A.M. It was thick and snowy. As we
breakfasted the blizzard started from the south-east, and was soon
blowing force 9, a full gale, with heavy drift. "The strongest wind I
have known here in summer."
^[201]
It was impossible to start, but we
turned out and made up the pony walls in heavy drift, one of them being
blown down three times. By 1.30 P.M. the sun was shining, and the land
was clear. We started at 2, with what we thought was Mount Hope showing
up ahead, but soon great snow-clouds were banking up and in two hours we
were walking in a deep gloom which made it difficult to find the track
made by the man-hauling party ahead. By the time we reached the cairn,
which was always built at the end of the first four miles, it was blowing
hard from the N.N.W. of all the unlikely quarters of the compass. Bowers
and Scott were on ski.

"I put on my windproof blouse and nosed out the track for two miles, when
we suddenly came upon the tent of the leading party. They had camped
owing to the difficulty of steering a course in such thick weather. The
ponies, however, with the wind abaft the beam were going along
splendidly, and Scott thought it worth while to shove on. We therefore
carried on another four miles, making ten in all, a good half march,
before we camped. On ski it was simply ripping, except for the inability
to see anything at all. With the wind behind, and the good sliding
surface made by the wind-hardened snow, one fairly slithered along.
Camping was less pleasant as it was blowing a gale by that time. We are
all in our bags again now, with a good hot meal inside one, and blow high
or blow low one might be in a worse place than a reindeer bag."
^[202]

It was all right for the people on ski (and this in itself gave us a
certain sense of grievance), but things had not been so easy with the
ponies, who were sinking very deeply in places, while we ourselves were
sinking well over our ankles. This day we began to cross the great
undulations in the Barrier, with the crests some mile apart, which here
mark the approach to the land. We had built the walls to the north of the
ponies on camping, because the wind was from that direction, but by
breakfast on December 4 it was blowing a thick blizzard from the
south-east. We began to feel bewildered by these extraordinary weather
changes, and not a little exasperated too. Again we could not march, and
again we had to dig out the sledges and ponies, and to move them all
round to the other side of the walls which we had partly to rebuild. "Oh
for the simple man-hauling life!" was our thought, and "poor helpless
beasts—this is no country for live stock." By this time we could not see
the neighbouring tents for the drift. The situation was not improved by
the fact that our tent doors, the tents having been pitched for the
strong north wind then blowing, were now facing the blizzard, and sheets
of snow entered with each individual. The man-hauling party came up just
before the worst of the blizzard started. The dogs alone were
comfortable, buried deep beneath the drifted snow. The sailors began to
debate who was the Jonah. They said he was the cameras. The great
blizzard was brewing all about us.

But at mid-day as though a curtain was rolled back, the thick snow fog
cleared off, while at the same time the wind fell calm, and a great
mountain appeared almost on the top of us. Far away to the south-east we
could distinguish, by looking very carefully, a break in the level
Barrier horizon—a new mountain which we reckoned must be at least in
latitude 86° and very high. Towards it the ranges stretched away, peak
upon peak, range upon range, as far as the eye could see. "The mountains
surpassed anything I have ever seen: beside the least of these giants Ben
Nevis would be a mere mound, and yet they are so immense as to dwarf each
other. They are intersected at every turn with mighty glaciers and
ice-falls and eternally ice-filled valleys that defy description. So
clear was everything that every rock seemed to stand out, and the effect
of the sun as he came round (between us and the mountains) was to make
the scene still more beautiful."
^[203]

Altogether we marched eleven miles this day, and camped right in front of
the Gateway, which we reckoned to be some thirteen miles away. We saw no
crevasses but crossed ten or twelve very large undulations, and estimated
that the dips between them were twelve to fifteen feet. Mount Hope was
bigger than we expected, and beyond it, stretching out into the Barrier
as far as we could see, was a great white line of jagged edges, the chaos
of pressure which this vast glacier makes as it flows into the
comparatively stationary ice of the Barrier.

My own pony Michael was shot after we came into camp. He was as
attractive a little beast as we had. His light weight helped him on soft
surfaces, but his small hoofs let him in farther than most and I notice
in Scott's diary that on November 19 the ponies were sinking half-way to
the hock, and Michael once or twice almost to the hock itself. A highly
strung, spirited animal, his off days took the form of fidgets, during
which he would be constantly trying to stop and eat snow, and then rush
forward to catch up the other ponies. Life was a constant source of
wonder to him, and no movement in the camp escaped his notice. Before we
had been long on the Barrier he developed mischievous habits and became a
rope eater and gnawer of other ponies' fringes, as we called the coloured
tassels we hung over their eyes to ward off snow-blindness. However, he
was by no means the only culprit, and he lost his own fringe to Nobby
quite early in the proceedings. It was not that he was hungry, for he
never quite finished his own feed. At any rate he enjoyed the few weeks
before he died, pricking up his ears and getting quite excited when
anything happened, and the arrival of the dog-teams each morning after he
had been tethered sent him to bed with much to dream of. And I must say
his master dreamed pretty regularly too. Michael was killed right in
front of the Gateway on December 4, just before the big blizzard, which,
though we did not know it, was on the point of breaking upon us, and he
was untying his cloth and chewing up everything he could reach to the
last. "It was decided after we camped, and he had his feed already on:
Meares reported that he had no more food for the dogs. He walked away,
and rolled in the snow on the way down, not having done so when we got
in. He was just like a naughty child all the way, and pulled all out. He
has been a good friend, and has a good record, 82° 23' S. He was a bit
done to-day: the blizzard had knocked him. Gallant little Michael!"
^[204]

As we got into our bags the mountain tops were fuzzy with drift. We
wanted one clear day to get across the chasm: one short march and the
ponies' task was done. Their food was nearly finished. Scott wrote that
night: "We are practically through with the first stage of our
journey."
^[205]

"Tuesday, December 5. Camp 30. Noon. We awoke this morning to a raging
howling blizzard. The blows we have had hitherto have lacked the very
fine powdering snow, that especial feature of the blizzard. To-day we
have it fully developed. After a minute or two in the open one is covered
from head to foot. The temperature is high, so that what falls or drives
against one sticks. The ponies—heads, tails, legs and all parts not
protected by their rugs—are covered with ice; the animals are standing
deep in snow, the sledges are almost covered, and huge drifts above the
tents. We have had breakfast, rebuilt the walls, and are now again in our
bags. One cannot see the next tent, let alone the land. What on earth
does such weather mean at this time of year? It is more than our share of
ill-fortune, I think, but the luck may turn yet....

"11 P.M. It has blown hard all day with quite the greatest snowfall I
remember. The drifts about the tents are simply huge. The temperature was
-27° this forenoon, and rose to +31° in the afternoon, at which time the
snow melted as it fell on anything but the snow, and, as a consequence,
there are pools of water on everything, the tents are wet through, also
the wind-clothes, night-boots, etc.; water drips from the tent poles and
door, lies on the floor-cloth, soaks the sleeping-bags, and makes
everything pretty wretched. If a cold snap follows before we have had
time to dry our things, we shall be mighty uncomfortable. Yet after all
it would be humorous enough if it were not for the seriousness of
delay—we can't afford that, and it's real hard luck that it should come
at such a time. The wind shows signs of easing down, but the temperature
does not fall and the snow is as wet as ever, not promising signs of
abatement.