The Worst Journey in the World (62 page)

We had done over eight miles at lunch. I had managed to scrape together
from the Barrier rations enough extra food to allow us a stick of
chocolate each for lunch, with two spoonfuls of raisins each in our tea.
In the afternoon we got clear of crevasses pretty soon, but towards the
end of the afternoon Captain Scott got fairly wound up and went on and
on. The breeze died down and my breath kept fogging my glasses, and our
windproofs got oppressively warm and altogether things were pretty
rotten. At last he stopped and we found we had done 14¾ miles. He said,
"What about fifteen miles for Christmas Day?" so we gladly went
on—anything definite is better than indefinite trudging.

We had a great feed which I had kept hidden and out of the official
weights since our departure from Winter Quarters. It consisted of a good
fat hoosh with pony meat and ground biscuit; a chocolate hoosh made of
water, cocoa, sugar, biscuit, raisins, and thickened with a spoonful of
arrowroot. (This is the most satisfying stuff imaginable.) Then came 2½
square inches of plum-duff each, and a good mug of cocoa washed down the
whole. In addition to this we had four caramels each and four squares of
crystallized ginger. I positively could not eat all mine, and turned in
feeling as if I had made a beast of myself. I wrote up my journal—in
fact I should have liked somebody to put me to bed.

December 26. We have seen many new ranges of mountains extending to the
S.E. of the Dominion Range. They are very distant, however, and must
evidently be the top of those bounding the Barrier. They could only be
seen from the tops of the ridges as waves up which we are continually
mounting. Our height yesterday morning by hypsometer was 8000 feet. That
is our last hypsometer record, as I had the misfortune to break the
thermometer. The hypsometer was one of my chief delights, and nobody
could have been more disgusted than myself at its breaking. However, we
have the aneroid to check the height. We are going gradually up and up.
As one would expect, a considerable amount of lassitude was felt over
breakfast after our feed last night. The last thing on earth I wanted to
do was to ship the harness round my poor tummy when we started. As usual
a stiff breeze from the south and a temperature of -7° blew in our faces.
Strange to say, however, we don't get frost-bitten. I suppose it is the
open-air life.

I could not tell if I had a frost-bite on my face now, as it is all
scales, so are my lips and nose. A considerable amount of red hair is
endeavouring to cover up matters. We crossed several ridges, and after
the effects of over-feeding had worn off did a pretty good march of
thirteen miles.

(No more Christmas Days, so no more big hooshes.)
^[238]

December 27. There is something the matter with our sledge or our team,
as we have an awful slog to keep up with the others. I asked Dr. Bill and
he said their sledge ran very easily. Ours is nothing but a desperate
drag with constant rallies to keep up. We certainly manage to do so, but
I am sure we cannot keep this up for long. We are all pretty well done up
to-night after doing 13.3 miles.

Our salvation is on the summits of the ridges, where hard névé and
sastrugi obtain, and we skip over this slippery stuff and make up lost
ground easily. In soft snow the other team draw steadily ahead, and it is
fairly heart-breaking to know you are putting your life out hour after
hour while they go along with little apparent effort.

December 28. The last few days have been absolutely cloudless, with
unbroken sunshine for twenty-four hours. It sounds very nice, but the
temperature never comes above zero and what Shackleton called "the
pitiless increasing wind" of the great plateau continues to blow at all
times from the south. It never ceases, and all night it whistles round
the tents, all day it blows in our faces. Sometimes it is S.S.E., or S.E.
to S., and sometimes even S. to W., but always southerly, chiefly
accompanied by low drift which at night forms quite a deposit round the
sledges. We expected this wind, so we must not growl at getting it. It
will be great fun sailing the sledges back before it. As far as weather
is concerned we have had remarkably fine days up here on this limitless
snow plain. I should like to know what there is beneath us—mountains and
valleys simply levelled off to the top with ice? We constantly come
across disturbances which I can only imagine are caused by the peaks of
ice-covered mountains, and no doubt some of the ice-falls and crevasses
are accountable to the same source. Our coming west has not cleared them,
as we have seen more disturbances to the west, many miles away. However,
they are getting less and less, and are now nothing but featureless rises
with apparently no crevasses. Our first two hours' pulling to-day....

From Lashly's Diary

December 29, 1911. A nasty head wind all day and low drift which
accumulates in patches and makes it the deuce of a job to get along. We
have got to put in long days to do the distance.

December 30, 1911. Sledges going heavy, surface and wind the same as
yesterday. We depôted our ski to-night, that is the party returning
to-morrow
, when we march in the forenoon and camp to change our sledge
runners into 10 feet. Done 11 miles but a bit stiff.

December 31, 1911. After doing 7 miles we camped and done the sledges
which took us until 11 P.M., and we had to dig out to get them done by
then, made a depôt and saw the old year out and the new year in. We all
wondered where we should be next New Year. It was so still and quiet; the
weather was dull and overcast all night, in fact we have not seen much of
the sun lately; it would be so nice if we could sometimes get a glimpse
of it, the sun is always cheering.

January 1912.
New Year's Day.
We pushed on as usual, but were rather
late getting away, 9.10—something unusual for us to be as late. The
temperature and wind is still very troublesome. We are now ahead of
Shackleton's dates and have passed the 87th parallel, so it is only 180
miles to the Pole.

January 2, 1912. The dragging is still very heavy and we seem to be
always climbing higher. We are now over 10,000 feet above sea level. It
makes it bad as we don't get enough heat in our food and the tea is not
strong enough to run out of the pot. Everything gets cold so quickly, the
water boils at about 196° F.

Scott's own diary of this first fortnight on the plateau shows the
immense shove of the man: he was getting every inch out of the miles,
every ounce out of his companions. Also he was in a hurry, he always was.
That blizzard which had delayed him just before the Gateway, and the
resulting surfaces which had delayed him in the lower reaches of the
glacier! One can feel the averages running through his brain: so many
miles to-day: so many more to-morrow. When shall we come to an end of
this pressure? Can we go straight or must we go more west? And then the
great undulating waves with troughs eight miles wide, and the buried
mountains, causing whirlpools in the ice—how immense, and how annoying.
The monotonous march: the necessity to keep the mind concentrated to
steer amongst disturbances: the relief of a steady plod when the
disturbances cease for a time: then more pressure and more crevasses.
Always slog on, slog on. Always a fraction of a mile more.... On December
30 he writes, "We have caught up Shackleton's dates."
^[239]

They made wonderful marches, averaging nearly fifteen statute miles (13
geog.) a day for the whole-day marches until the Second Return Party
turned back on January 4. Scott writes on December 26, "It seems
astonishing to be disappointed with a march of 15 (statute) miles when I
had contemplated doing little more than 10 with full loads."
^[240]

The Last Returning Party came back with the news that Scott must reach
the Pole with the greatest ease. This seemed almost a certainty: and yet
it was, as we know now, a false impression. Scott's plans were based on
Shackleton's averages over the same country. The blizzard came and put
him badly behind: but despite this he caught Shackleton up. No doubt the
general idea then was that Scott was going to have a much easier time
than he had expected. We certainly did not realize then, and I do not
think Scott himself had any notion of, the price which had been paid.

Of the three teams of four men each which started from the bottom of the
Beardmore, Scott's team was a very long way the strongest: it was the
team which, with one addition, went to the Pole. Lieutenant Evans' team
had mostly done a lot of man-hauling already: it was hungry and I think a
bit stale. Bowers' team was fresh and managed to keep up for the most
part, but it was very done at the end of the day. Scott's own team went
along with comparative ease. From the top of the glacier two teams went
on during the last fortnight of which we have been speaking. The first of
them was Scott's unit complete, just as it had pulled up the glacier. The
second team consisted, I believe, of the men whom Scott considered to be
the strongest; two from Evans' team, and two from Bowers'. All Scott's
team were fresh to the extent that they had done no man-hauling until we
started up the glacier. But two of the other team, Lieutenant Evans and
Lashly, had been man-hauling since the breakdown of the second motor on
November 1. They had man-hauled four hundred statute miles farther than
the rest. Indeed Lashly's man-hauling journey from Corner Camp to beyond
87° 32' S., and back, is one of the great feats of polar travelling.

Surely and not very slowly, Scott's team began to wear down the other
team. They were going easily when the others were making heavy weather
and were sometimes far behind. During the fortnight they rose, according
to the corrected observations, from 7151 feet (Upper Glacier Depôt) to
9392 feet above sea level (Three Degree Depôt). The rarefied air of the
Plateau with its cold winds and lower temperatures, just now about -10°
to -12° at night and -3° during the day, were having their effect on the
second team, as well as the forced marches. This is quite clear from
Scott's diary, and from the other diaries also. What did not appear until
after the Last Returning Party had turned homewards was that the first
team was getting worn out too. This team which had gone so strong up the
glacier, which had done those amazingly good marches on the plateau,
broke up unexpectedly and in some respects rapidly from the 88th parallel
onwards.

Seaman Evans was the first man to crack. He was the heaviest, largest,
most muscular man we had, and that was probably one of the main reasons:
for his allowance of food was the same as the others. But one mishap
which contributed to his collapse seems to have happened during this
first fortnight on the plateau. On December 31 the 12-feet sledges were
turned into 10-feet ones by stripping off the old scratched runners which
had come up the glacier and shipping new 10-feet ones which had been
brought for the purpose. This job was done by the seamen, and Evans
appears to have had some accident to his hand, which is mentioned several
times afterwards.

Meanwhile Scott had to decide whom he was going to take on with him to
the Pole,—for it was becoming clear that in all probability he
would
reach the Pole: "What castles one builds now hopefully that the Pole is
ours," he wrote the day after the supporting party left him. The final
advance to the Pole was, according to plan, to have been made by four
men. We were organized in four-man units: our rations were made up for
four men for a week: our tents held four men: our cookers held four mugs,
four pannikins and four spoons. Four days before the Supporting Party
turned, Scott ordered the second sledge of four men to depôt their ski.
It is clear, I suppose, that at this time he meant the Polar Party to
consist of four men. I think there can be no doubt that he meant one of
those men to be himself: "for your own ear also, I am exceedingly fit and
can go with the best of them," he wrote from the top of the glacier.
^[241]

He changed his mind and went forward a party of five: Scott, Wilson,
Bowers, Oates and Seaman Evans. I am sure he wished to take as many men
as possible to the Pole. He sent three men back: Lieutenant Evans in
charge, and two seamen, Lashly and Crean. It is the vivid story of those
three men, who turned on January 4 in latitude 87° 32', which is told by
Lashly in the next chapter. Scott wrote home: "A last note from a hopeful
position. I think it's going to be all right. We have a fine party going
forward and arrangements are all going well."
^[242]

Ten months afterwards we found their bodies.

THE DEVIL. And these are the creatures in whom you discover what
you call a Life Force!

DON JUAN. Yes; for now comes the most surprising part of the
whole business.

THE STATUE. What's that?

DON JUAN. Why, that you can make any of these cowards brave by
simply putting an idea into his head.

THE STATUE. Stuff! As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's
as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But
that about putting an idea into a man's head is stuff and
nonsense. In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little
hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than
to win.

DON JUAN. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men
never really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting
to further a universal purpose—fighting for an idea, as they
call it.

BERNARD SHAW,
Man and Superman.

IV. RETURNING PARTIES

Two Dog Teams (Meares and Dimitri) turned back from the bottom of the
Beardmore Glacier on December 11, 1911. They reached Hut Point on January
4, 1912.