The Worst Journey in the World (72 page)

"
Saturday, June 8.
The weather changes since the night before last have
been, luckily for us, uncommon. Thursday evening a strong northerly wind
started with some drift, and this increased during the night until it
blew over forty miles an hour, the temperature being -22°. A strong wind
from the north is rare, and generally is the prelude of a blizzard. This
northerly wind fell towards morning, and the day was calm and clear, the
temperature falling until it was -33° at 4 P.M. The barometer had been
abnormally low during the day, being only 28.24 at noon. Then at 8 P.M.
with the temperature at -36°, this blizzard broke, and at the same time
there was a big upward jump of the barometer, which seemed to mark the
beginning of the blizzard much more than the thermometer, which did not
rise much. The wind during the night was very high, blowing 72 and 66
miles an hour, for hours at a time, and has not yet shown any sign of
diminishing. Now, after lunch, the hut is straining and creaking, while a
shower of stones rattles at intervals against it: the drift is generally
very heavy."

"
Sunday, June 9.
The temperature has been higher, about zero, during
the day, and the blizzard shows no signs of falling yet. The gusts are
still of a very high velocity. A large quantity of ice to the north seems
to have gone out: at any rate our narrow strip along the front, which is
so valuable to us, will probably be permanent now."

"
Monday, June 10.
A most turbulent day. It is very hard to settle down
to do anything, read or write, with such a turmoil outside, the hut
shaking until we begin to wonder how long it will stand such winds. Most
of the time the wind is averaging about sixty miles an hour, but the
gusts are far greater, and at times it seems that something must go. Just
before lunch I was racking my brains to write an Editorial for the South
Polar Times, and had congratulated ourselves on having the sea-ice which
is still in North Bay. As we were having lunch Nelson came in and said,
'The thermometers have gone!' All the ice in North Bay has gone. The part
immediately next to the shore, which has now been in so long, and which
was over two feet thick, we had considered sure to stay. On it has gone
out the North Bay thermometer screen with its instruments, which was
placed 400 yards out, the fish-trap, some shovels and a sledge with a
crowbar. The gusts were exceptionally strong at lunch, and the ice must
have gone out very quickly. There was no sign of it afterwards, though it
was not drifting much and we could see some distance. To lose this ice in
North Bay is a great disappointment, for it means so much to us here
whether we have ice or water at our doors. We are now pretty well
confined to the cape both for our own exercise and that of the mules, and
in the dark it is very rough walking. But if the ice in South Bay were to
follow, it would be a calamity, cutting us off entirely from the south
and all sledging next year. Let us hope we shall be spared this."

This blizzard lasted for eight days, up till then the longest blizzard we
had experienced: "It died as it had lived, blowing hard to the last,
averaging 68 miles an hour from the south, and then 56 miles an hour from
the north, finally back to the south, and so to calm. To sit here with no
noise of wind whistling in the ventilator, calm and starlight outside,
and North Bay freezing over once more, is a very great relief."
^[263]

It is noteworthy that this clearance of the ice, as also that in the
beginning of May, coincided roughly with the maximum declination of the
moon, and therefore with a run of spring tides.

It would be tedious to give any detailed account of the winds and drift
which followed, night and day. There were few days which did not produce
their blizzard, but in contrast the hours of bright starlight were very
beautiful. "Walking home over the cape in the darkness this afternoon I
saw an eruption of Erebus which, compared with anything we have seen here
before, was very big. It looked as though a great mass of flame shot up
some thousands of feet into the air, and, as suddenly as it rose, fell
again, rising again to about half the height, and then disappearing.
There was then a great column of steam rising from the crater, and
probably, so Debenham asserts, it was not a flame which appeared, but the
reflection from a big bubble breaking in the crater. Afterwards the smoke
cloud stretched away southwards, and we could not see the end of
it."
^[264]

Blizzard followed blizzard, and at the beginning of July we had four days
which were the thickest I have ever seen. Generally when you go out into
a blizzard the drift is blown from your face and clothes, and though you
cannot see your stretched-out hand, especially on a dark winter day, the
wind prevents you being smothered. The wind also prevents the land,
tents, hut and cases from being covered. But during this blizzard the
drift drove at you in such blankets of snow, that your person was
immediately blotted out, your face covered and your eyes plugged up. Gran
lost himself for some time on the hill when taking the 8 A.M.
observations, and Wright had difficulty in getting back from the magnetic
cave. Men had narrow escapes of losing themselves, though they were but a
few feet from the hut.

When this blizzard cleared the camp was buried, and even on unobstructed
surfaces the snowdrifts averaged four feet of additional depth. Two
enormous drifts ran down to the sea from either end of the hut. I do not
think we ever found some of our stores again, but the larger part we
carried up to the higher ground behind us where they remained fairly
clear. About this time I began to notice large sheets of anchor ice off
the end of Cape Evans, that is to say, ice forming and remaining on the
bottom of the open sea. Now also the open water was extending round the
cape into the South Bay behind us: but it was too dark to get any
reliable idea of the distribution of ice in the Sound. We were afraid
that we were cut off from Hut Point, but I do not believe that this was
the case; though the open water must have stretched many miles to the
south in the middle of the Sound. The days when it was clear enough even
to potter about outside the hut were exceptional. God was very angry.

"
Sunday, July 14.
A blizzard during the night, and after breakfast it
was drifting a lot. While we were having service some of the men went
over the camp to get ice for water. The sea-ice had been blown out of
North Bay, and the men supposed that the sea was open, and would look
black, but Crean tells me that they nearly walked over the ice-foot, and,
when it cleared later, we saw the sea as white as the ice-foot itself. A
strip of ice which was lying out in the Bay last night must have been
brought in by the tide, even against a wind of some forty miles an hour.
This shows what an influence the tides and currents have in comparison
with the winds, for just at this time we are having very big tides. It
was blowing and drifting all the morning, and the tide was flowing in,
pressing the ice in under the ice-foot to such an extent that later it
remained there, though the tide was ebbing and a strong southerly was
blowing."
^[265]
Incidentally the bergs which were grounded in our
neighbourhood were shifted and broken about considerably by these high
winds: also the meteorological screen placed on the Ramp the year before
was broken from its upright, which had snapped in the middle, and must
have been taken up into the air and so out to sea, for there was no trace
of it to be found: Wright lost two doors placed over the entrance to the
magnetic cave: when he lifted them they were taken out of his hands by
the wind, and disappeared into the air and were never seen again.

So ready was the sea to freeze that there can be little doubt that it
already contained large numbers of ice crystals, and time and again I
have stood upon the ice-foot watching the tongues of the winds licking up
the waters as they roared their way out to sea. Then, with no warning,
there would come, suddenly and completely, a lull. And there would be a
film of ice, covering the surface of the sea, come so quickly that all
you could say was that it was not there before and it was there now. And
then down would come the wind again and it was gone. Once when the winter
had gone and daylight had returned I stood upon the end of the cape, the
air all calm around me, and there, half-a-mile away, a full blizzard was
blowing: the islands, and even the berg between Inaccessible Island
and the cape, were totally obscured in the thickest drift: the top of the
drift, which was very distinct, thinned to show dimly the crest of
Inaccessible Island: Turk's Head was visible and Erebus quite clear. In
fact I was just on the edge of a thick blizzard, blowing down the Strait,
the side showing as a perpendicular wall about 500 feet high and
travelling, I should say, about 40 miles an hour. A roar came out from it
of the wind and waves.

The weather conditions were extraordinarily local, as another experience
will show. Atkinson and Dimitri were off to Hut Point with the dogs,
carrying biscuit and pemmican for the coming Search Journey: I went with
them some way, and then left them to place a flag upon the end of Glacier
Tongue for surveying purposes. It was clear and bright, and it was easy
to get a sketch of the bearings of the islands from this position, which
showed how great a portion of the Tongue must have broken off in the
autumn of 1911. I anticipated a pleasant walk home, but was somewhat
alarmed when heavy wind and drift came down from the direction of the
Hutton Cliffs. Wearing spectacles, and being unable to see without them,
I managed to steer with difficulty by the sun which still showed dimly
through the drift. It was amazing suddenly to walk out of the wall of
drift into light airs at Little Razorback Island. One minute it was
blowing and drifting hard and I could see almost nothing, the next it was
calm, save for little whirlwinds of snow formed by eddies of air drawn in
from the north. In another three hundred yards the wind was blowing from
the north. On this day Atkinson found wind force 8 and temperature -17°
at Hut Point: at Cape Evans the temperature was zero and men were sitting
on the rocks and smoking in the sun. Many instances might be given to
show how local our weather conditions often were.

There was a morning some time in the middle of the winter when we awoke
to one of our usual tearing blizzards. We had had some days of calm, and
the ice had frozen sufficiently for the fish-trap to be lowered again.
But that it would not stand much of this wind was obvious, and after
breakfast Atkinson stuck out his jaw and said he wasn't going to lose
another trap for any dash blizzard. He and Keohane sallied forth on to
the ice, lost to our sight immediately in the darkness and drift. They
got it, but arrived on the cape in quite a different place, and we were
glad to see them back. Soon afterwards the ice blew out.

Much credit is due to the mule leaders that they were able to exercise
their animals without hurt. Cape Evans in the dark, strewn with great
boulders, with the open sea at your feet, is no easy place to manage a
very high-spirited and excitable mule, just out of a warm stable,
especially if this is his first outing for several days and the wind is
blowing fresh, and you are not sure if your face is frost-bitten, and you
are quite sure that your hands are. But the exercise was carried out
without mishap. The mules themselves were most anxious to go out, and
when Pyaree developed a housemaid's knee and was kept in, she revenged
herself upon her more fortunate companions by biting each one hard as it
passed her head on its way to and from the door. Gulab was the biggest
handful, and Williamson managed him with skill: some of them, especially
Lal Khan, were very playful, running round and round their leaders and
stopping to paw the ground: Khan Sahib, on the other hand, was bored,
yawning continually: it was suggested that he was suffering from polar
ennui! Altogether they reflected the greatest credit upon Lashly, who
groomed them every day and took the greatest care of them. They were
subject to the most violent fits of jealousy, being much disturbed if a
rival got undue attention. The dog Vaida, however, was good friends with
them all, going down the line and rubbing noses with them in their
stalls.

The food of the mules was based upon that given by Oates to the ponies
the year before, and the results were successful.

The accommodation given to the dogs in the Terra Nova on the way south is
open to criticism. As the reader may remember, they were chained on the
top of the deck cargo on the main deck, and of course had a horrible
time during the gale, and any subsequent bad weather, which did not
however last very long. But it was quite impossible to put them anywhere
else, for every square inch between decks was so packed that even our
personal belongings for more than two years were reduced to one small
uniform case. Any seaman will easily understand that to build houses or
shelters on deck over and above what we had already was out of the
question. As a matter of fact I doubt whether the dogs had a worse time
than we during that gale. In good weather at sea, and at all times in the
pack, they were comfortable enough. But future explorers might consider
whether they can give their dogs more shelter during the winter than we
were able to do. Amundsen, whose Winter Quarters were on the Barrier
itself, and who experienced lower temperatures and very much less wind
than was our lot at Cape Evans, had his dogs in tents, and let them run
loose in the camp during the day. Tents would have gone in the winds we
experienced, and I have explained that we had no snow in which we could
make houses, as was done by Amundsen in the Barrier.

Our more peaceable dogs were allowed to run loose, especially during this
last winter, at the beginning of which we also built a dog hospital. We
should have liked to loose them all, but if we did so they immediately
flew at one another's throats. We might perhaps have let them loose if we
had first taken the precaution Amundsen took, and muzzled all of them
before doing so. The sport of fighting, so his dogs discovered, lost all
its charm when they found they could not taste blood, and they gave it
up, and ran about unmuzzled and happy. But the slaughter among the seals
and penguins would have been horrible with us, and many dogs might have
been carried away on the breaking sea-ice. The tied-up ones lay under the
lee of a line of cases, each in his own hole. They curled up quite snugly
buried in the snowdrift when blizzards were blowing, and lay exactly in
the same way when sledging on the Barrier, the first duty of the
dog-driver after pitching his own tent being to dig holes for each of his
dogs. It may be that these conditions are more natural to them than any
other, and that they are warmer when covered by the drifted snow than
they would be in any unwarmed shelter: but this I doubt. At any rate they
throve exceedingly under these rigorous conditions, soon becoming fat and
healthy after the hardest sledge journeys, and their sledging record is a
very fine one. We could not have built them a hut; as it was, we left our
magnetic hut, a far smaller affair, in New Zealand, for there was no room
to stow it on the ship. I would not advise housing dogs in a hut built
with a lean-to roof as an annexe to the main living-hut, but this would
be one way of doing it if you are prepared to stand the noise and smell.