The Worst Journey in the World (59 page)

During this time of deep snow the sledge-meters would not work and we
were compelled to estimate the distance marched each day. "It has been a
tremendous slog, but I think a most hopeful day. Before starting it took
us about two hours to make the depôt and then we got straight into the
midst of the big pressure. The dogs, with ten cases of biscuit, came
behind and pulled very well. We soon caught sight of a big boulder, and
Bill and I roped up and went over to it. It was a block of very coarse
granite, nearly gneiss, with large crystals of quartz in it, rusty
outside and quite pinkish when chipped, and with veins of quartz running
through it. It was a vast thing to be carried along on the ice, and
looked very typical of the rock round. Instead of keeping under the great
cliff where Shackleton made his depôt, we steered for Mount Kyffin, that
is towards the middle of the glacier, until lunch, when we had probably
done about two or three miles. There was a crevasse wherever we went, but
we managed to pull on ski and had no one down, and the deep snow saved
the dogs."
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The dog-teams were certainly running very big risks that
morning. They turned back after lunch, having been brought on far
longer than had been originally intended, for, as I have said, they were
to have been back at Hut Point before now, and their provision allowance
would not allow of further advance. Perhaps we rather overestimated the
dogs' capacities when Bowers wrote: "The dogs are wonderfully fit and
will rush Meares and Dimitri back like the wind. I expect he will be
nearly back by Christmas, as they will do about thirty miles a day." But
Meares told us when we got back to the hut that the dogs had by no means
had an easy journey home. Now, however, "with a whirl and a rush they
were off on the homeward trail. I could not see them (being snow-blind),
but heard the familiar orders as the last of our animal transport left
us."
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Our difficulties during the next four days were increased by the
snow-blindness of half the men. The evening we reached the glacier Bowers
wrote: "I am afraid I am going to pay dearly for not wearing goggles
yesterday when piloting the ponies. My right eye has gone bung, and my
left one is pretty dicky. If I am in for a dose of snow glare it will
take three or four days to leave me, and I am afraid I am in the ditch
this time. It is painful to look at this paper, and my eyes are fairly
burning as if some one had thrown sand into them." And then: "I have
missed my journal for four days, having been enduring the pains of hell
with my eyes as well as doing the most back-breaking work I have ever
come up against.... I was as blind as a bat, and so was Keohane in my
team. Cherry pulled alongside me, with Crean and Keohane behind. By
sticking plaster over my glasses except one small central spot I shut off
most light and could see the points of my ski, but the glasses were
always fogged with perspiration and my eyes kept on streaming water which
cannot be wiped off on the march as a ski stick is held in each hand; and
so heavy were our weights
(we had now taken on the weights which had been
on the dog sledges)
that if any of the pair slacked a hand even, the
sledge stopped. It was all we could do to keep the sledge moving for
short spells of a few hundred yards, the whole concern sinking so deeply
into the soft snow as to form a snow-plough. The starting was worse than
pulling as it required from ten to fifteen desperate jerks on the harness
to move the sledge at all." Many others were also snowblind, caused
partly by the strain of the last march of the ponies, partly by not
having realized that now that we were day-marching the sun was more
powerful and more precautions should be taken. The cocaine and zinc
sulphate tablets which we had were excellent, but we also found that our
tea leaves, which had been boiled twice and would otherwise have been
thrown away, relieved the pain if tied into some cotton and kept pressed
against the eyes. The tannic acid in the tea acted as an astringent. A
snowblind man can see practically nothing anyhow and so he is not much
worse off if a handkerchief is tied over his eyes.

"
Beardmore Glacier.
Just a tiny note to be taken back by the dogs.
Things are not so rosy as they might be, but we keep our spirits up and
say the luck must turn. This is only to tell you that I find I can keep
up with the rest as well as of old."
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Then for the first time we were left with our full loads of 800 lbs. a
sledge. Even Bowers asked Scott whether he was going to try it without
relaying. That night Scott's diary runs:

"It was a very anxious business when we started after lunch, about 4.30.
Could we pull our full loads or not? My own party got away first, and, to
my joy, I found we could make fairly good headway. Every now and again
the sledge sank in a soft patch, which brought us up, but we learned to
treat such occasions with patience. We got sideways to the sledge and
hauled it out, Evans (P.O.) getting out of his ski to get better
purchase. The great thing is to keep the sledge moving, and for an hour
or more there were dozens of critical moments when it all but stopped,
and not a few when it brought up altogether. The latter were very trying
and tiring."
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Altogether it was an encouraging day and we reckoned we
had made seven miles. Generally it was not Scott's team which made the
heaviest weather these days but on December 12 they were in greater
difficulties than any of us. It was indeed a gruelling day, for the
surface was worse than ever and many men were snow-blind. After five
hours' work in the morning we were about half a mile forward. We were in
a sea of pressure, the waves coming at us from our starboard bow, the
distance between the crests not being very great. We could not have
advanced at all had it not been for our ski: "on foot one sinks to the
knees, and if pulling on a sledge to half way between knee and
thigh."
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On December 13, "the sledges sank in over twelve inches, and all the
gear, as well as the thwartship pieces, were acting as breaks. The tugs
and heaves we enjoyed, and the number of times we had to get out of our
ski to upright the sledge, were trifles compared with the strenuous
exertion of every muscle and nerve to keep the wretched drag from
stopping when once under weigh; and then it would stick, and all the
starting operations had to be gone through afresh. We did perhaps half a
mile in the forenoon. Anticipating a better surface in the afternoon we
got a shock. Teddy
(Evans)
led off half an hour earlier to pilot a way,
and Captain Scott tried some fake with his spare runners
(he lashed them
under the sledge to prevent the cross-pieces ploughing the snow)
that
involved about an hour's work. We had to continually turn our runners up
to scrape the ice off them, for in these temperatures they are liable to
get warm and melt the snow on them, and that freezes into knobs of ice
which act like sandpaper or spikes on a pair of skates. We bust off
second full of hope having done so well in the forenoon, but pride goeth
(before a fall)
. We stuck ten yards from the camp, and nine hours later
found us little more than half a mile on. I have never seen a sledge sink
so. I have never pulled so hard, or so nearly crushed my inside into my
backbone by the everlasting jerking with all my strength on the canvas
band round my unfortunate tummy. We were all in the same boat however.

"I saw Teddy struggling ahead and Scott astern, but we were the worst off
as the leading team had topped the rise and I was too blind to pick out a
better trail. We fairly played ourselves out that time, and finally had
to give it up and relay. Halving the load we went forward about a mile
with it, and, leaving that lot, went back for the remainder. So done were
my team that we could do little more than pull the half loads. Teddy's
team did the same, and though Scott's did not, we camped practically the
same time, having gone over our distance three times. Mount Kyffin was
still ahead of us to the left: we seemed as if we can never come up with
it. To-morrow Scott decided that if we could not move our full loads we
would start relaying systematically. It was a most depressing outlook
after such a day of strenuous labour."
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We got soaked with
perspiration these days, though generally pulling in vest, pants, and
windproof trousers only. Directly we stopped we cooled quickly. Two skuas
appeared at lunch, attracted probably by the pony flesh below, but it was
a long way from the sea for them to come. On Thursday December 14, Scott
wrote: "Indigestion and the soggy condition of my clothes kept me awake
for some time last night, and the exceptional exercise gives bad attacks
of cramp. Our lips are getting raw and blistered. The eyes of the party
are improving, I am glad to say. We are just starting our march with no
very hopeful outlook."

But we slogged along with much better results. "Once into the middle of
the glacier we had been steering more or less for the Cloudmaker and by
supper to-day were well past Mount Kyffin and were about 2000 feet up
after an estimated run of 11 or 12 statute miles. But the most cheering
sign was that the blue ice was gradually coming nearer the surface; at
lunch it was two feet down, and at our supper camp only one foot. In
pitching our tent Crean broke into a crevasse which ran about a foot in
front of the door and there was another at Scott's door. We threw an
empty oil can down and it echoed for a terribly long time."
^[219]
We
spent the morning of December 15 crossing a maze of crevasses though they
were well bridged; I believe all these lower reaches of the glacier are
badly crevassed, but the thick snow and our ski kept us from tumbling in.
There was a great deal of competition between the teams which was perhaps
unavoidable but probably a pity. This day Bowers' diary records, "Did a
splendid bust off on ski, leaving Scott in the lurch, and eventually
overhauling the party which had left some time before us. All the morning
we kept up a steady, even swing which was quite a pleasure." But the same
day Scott wrote, "Evans' is now decidedly the slowest unit, though
Bowers' is not much faster. We keep up and overhaul either without
difficulty." Bowers' team considered themselves quite good, but both
teams were satisfied of their own superiority; as a matter of fact
Scott's was the faster, as it should have been for it was certainly the
heavier of the two.

"It was a very bad light all day, but after lunch it began to get worse,
and by 5 o'clock it was snowing hard and we could see nothing. We went on
for nearly an hour, steering by the wind and any glimpse of sastrugi, and
then, very reluctantly, Scott camped. It looks better now. The surface is
much harder and more wind-swept, and as a rule the ice is only six inches
underneath. We are beginning to talk about Christmas. We get very thirsty
these days in the warm temperatures: we shall feel it farther up when the
cold gets into our open pores and sunburnt hands and cracked lips. I am
plastering some skin on mine to-night. Our routine now is: turn out 5.30,
lunch 1, and camp at 7, and we get a short 8 hours' sleep, but we are so
dead tired we could sleep half into the next day: we get about 9½ hours'
march. Tea at lunch a positive godsend. We are raising the land to the
south well, and are about 2500 feet up, latitude about 84° 8' S."
^[220]

The next day, December 16, Bowers wrote: "We have had a really enjoyable
day's march, except the latter end of the afternoon. At the outset in the
forenoon my sledge was a bit in the lurch, and Scott drew steadily away
from us. I knew I could ordinarily hold my own with him, but for the
first two hours we dropped till we were several hundred yards astern; try
as I would to rally up my team we could gain nothing. On examining the
runners however we soon discovered the cause by the presence of a thin
film of ice. After that we ran easily. The thing one must avoid doing is
to touch them with the hand or mitt, as anything damp will make ice on
them. We usually turn the sledge on its side and scrape one runner at a
time with the back of our knives so as to avoid any chance of cutting or
chipping them. In the afternoon either the tea or the butter we had at
lunch made us so strong that we fairly overran the other team."
^[221]

"We must push on all we can, for we are now 6 days behind Shackleton, all
due to that wretched storm. So far, since we got among the disturbances
we have not seen such alarming crevasses as I had expected; certainly
dogs could have come up as far as this."
^[222]

"At lunch we could see big pressure ahead having done first over five
miles. Soon after lunch, having gone down a bit, we rose among very rough
stuff. We plugged on until 4.30, when ski became quite impossible, and we
put them on the sledges and started on foot. We immediately began putting
legs down: one step would be on blue ice and the next two feet down into
snow: very hard going. The pressure ahead seemed to stretch right into a
big glacier next the Keltie Glacier to the east, and so we altered course
for a small bluff point about two-thirds of the way along the base of the
Cloudmaker. We were to camp at 6, but did not do so until about 6.30, the
last 1½ hours in big pressure, crossing big and smaller waves, and
hundreds of crevasses which one of us generally found. We are now camped
in very big pressure, and with difficulty we found a patch big enough to
pitch the tent free from crevasses. We are pretty well past the Keltie
Glacier which is a vast tumbled mass: there is a long line of ice falls
ahead, and I think there is a hard day ahead of us to-morrow among
that pressure which must be enormous. We can't go farther inshore here,
being under the north end of the Cloudmaker, and a fine mountain it is,
rising precipitously above us.
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