The Worst Journey in the World (19 page)

"We commence to move between two floes, make 200 or 300 yards, and are
then brought up bows on to a large lump. This may mean a wait of anything
from ten minutes to half-an-hour, whilst the ship swings round, falls
away, and drifts to leeward. When clear she forges ahead again and the
operation is repeated. Occasionally when she can get a little way on she
cracks the obstacle and slowly passes through it. There is a distinct
swell—very long, very low. I counted the period as about nine seconds.
Every one says the ice is breaking up."
^[79]

On December 28 the gale abated. The sky cleared, and showed signs of open
water ahead. It was cold in the wind but the sun was wonderful, and we
lay out on deck and basked in its warmth, a cheerful, careless crowd.
After breakfast there was a consultation between Scott and Wilson in the
crow's nest. It was decided to raise steam.

Meanwhile we sounded, and found a volcanic muddy bottom at 2035 fathoms.
The last sounding showed 1400 fathoms; we had passed over a bank.

Steam came at 8 P.M. and we began to push forward. At first it was hard
going, but slowly we elbowed our way until the spaces of open water
became more frequent. Soon we found one or two large pools, several miles
in extent; then the floes became smaller. Later we could see no really
big floes at all; "the sheets of thin ice are broken into comparatively
regular figures, none more than thirty yards across," and "we are
steaming amongst floes of small area evidently broken by swell, and with
edges abraded by contact."
^[80]

We could not be far from the southern edge of the pack. Twenty-four hours
after raising steam we were still making good progress, checking
sometimes to carve our way through some obstacle. At last we were getting
a return for the precious coal expended. The sky was overcast, the
outlook from the masthead flat and dreary, but hour by hour it became
more obvious that we neared the threshold of the open sea. At 1 A.M. on
Friday, December 30 (lat. about 71½° S., noon observation 72° 17' S.,
177° 9' E.) Bowers steered through the last ice stream. Behind was some
400 miles of ice. Cape Crozier was 334 miles (geog.) ahead.

Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice....
MILTON,
Paradise Lost
, II.

"They say it's going to blow like hell. Go and look at the glass." Thus
Titus Oates quietly to me a few hours before we left the pack.

I went and looked at the barograph and it made me feel sea-sick. Within a
few hours I was sick,
very
sick; but we newcomers to the Antarctic had
yet to learn that we knew nothing about its barometer. Nothing very
terrible happened after all. When I got up to the bridge for the morning
watch we were in open water and it was blowing fresh. It freshened all
day, and by the evening it was blowing a southerly with a short choppy
North Sea swell, and very warm. By 4 A.M. the next morning there was a
big sea running and the dogs and ponies were having a bad time. Rennick
had the morning watch these days, and I was his humble midshipman.

At 5.45 we sighted what we thought was a berg on the port bow. About
three minutes later Rennick said, "There's a bit of pack," and I went
below and reported to Evans. It was very thick with driving snow and also
foggy, and before Evans got up to the bridge we were quite near the pack,
and amongst bits which had floated from it, one of which must have been
our berg. We took in the headsails as quickly as possible, these being
the only sails set, and nosed along dead slow to leeward under steam
alone. Gradually we could see either pack or the blink of it all along
our port and starboard beam, while gradually we felt our way down a big
patch of open water.

There was quite a meeting on the bridge, and it was decided to get well
in, and lie in open water under lee of the pack till the gale blew itself
out. "Under ordinary circumstances the safe course would have been to go
about and stand to the east. But in our case we must risk trouble to get
smoother water for the ponies. We passed a stream of ice over which the
sea was breaking heavily, and one realized the danger of being amongst
loose floes in such a sea. But soon we came to a compacter body of floes,
and running behind this we were agreeably surprised to find comparatively
smooth water. We ran on for a bit, then stopped and lay to."
^[81]

All that day we lay behind that pack, steaming slowly to leeward every
now and then, as the ice drifted down upon us. Towards night it began to
clear. It was New Year's Eve.

I turned in, thinking to wake in 1911. But I had not been long asleep
when I found Atkinson at my side. "Have you seen the land?" he said.
"Wrap your blankets round you, and go and see." And when I got up on deck
I could see nothing for a while. Then he said: "All the high lights are
snow lit up by the sun." And there they were: the most glorious peaks
appearing, as it were like satin, above the clouds, the only white in a
dark horizon. The first glimpse of Antarctic land, Sabine and the great
mountains of the Admiralty Range. They were 110 miles away. But

Icy mountains high on mountains pil'd
Seem to the shivering sailor from afar
Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of cloud;
^[82]

and, truth to tell, I went back to my warm bunk. At midnight a rowdy mob,
ringing the New Year in with the dinner-bell, burst into our Nursery. I
expected to be hauled out, but got off with a dig in the ribs from
Birdie Bowers.

In brilliant sunshine we coasted down Victoria Land. "To-night it is
absolutely calm, with glorious bright sunshine. Several people were
sunning themselves at 11 o'clock! Sitting on deck and reading."
^[83]

At 8.30 on Monday night, January 2, we sighted Erebus, 115 miles away.
The next morning most of us were on the yards furling sail. We were
heading for Cape Crozier, the northern face of Ross Island was open to
our fascinated gaze, and away to the east stretched the Barrier face
until it disappeared below the horizon. Adélie penguins and Killer whales
were abundant in the water through which we steamed.

I have seen Fuji, the most dainty and graceful of all mountains; and also
Kinchinjunga: only Michael Angelo among men could have conceived such
grandeur. But give me Erebus for my friend. Whoever made Erebus knew all
the charm of horizontal lines, and the lines of Erebus are for the most
part nearer the horizontal than the vertical. And so he is the most
restful mountain in the world, and I was glad when I knew that our hut
would lie at his feet. And always there floated from his crater the lazy
banner of his cloud of steam.

Now we had reached the Barrier face some five miles east of the point at
which it joins the basalt cliffs of Cape Crozier. We could see the great
pressure waves which had proved such an obstacle to travellers from the
Discovery to the Emperor penguin rookery. The Knoll was clear, but the
summit of Mount Terror was in the clouds. As for the Barrier we seemed to
have known it all our lives, it was so exactly like what we had imagined
it to be, and seen in the pictures and photographs.

Scott had a whaler launched, and we pulled in under the cliffs. There was
a considerable swell.

"We were to examine the possibilities of landing, but the swell was so
heavy in its break among the floating blocks of ice along the actual
beach and ice foot that a landing was out of the question. We should
have broken up the boat and have all been in the water together. But I
assure you it was tantalizing to me, for there about six feet above us on
a small dirty piece of the old bay ice about ten feet square one living
Emperor penguin chick was standing disconsolately stranded, and close by
stood one faithful old Emperor parent asleep. This young Emperor was
still in the down, a most interesting fact in the bird's life history at
which we had rightly guessed, but which no one had actually observed
before. It was in a stage never yet seen or collected, for the wings were
already quite clean of down and feathered as in the adult, also a line
down the breast was shed of down and part of the head. This bird would
have been a treasure to me, but we could not risk life for it, so it had
to remain where it was. It was a curious fact that with as much clean ice
to live on as they could have wished for, these destitute derelicts of a
flourishing colony, now gone north to sea on floating bay ice, should
have preferred to remain standing on the only piece of bay ice left, a
piece about ten feet square and now pressed up six feet above water
level, evidently wondering why it was so long in starting north with the
general exodus which must have taken place just a month ago. The whole
incident was most interesting and full of suggestion as to the slow
working of the brain of these queer people. Another point was most weird
to see, that on the
under
side of this very dirty piece of sea-ice,
which was about two feet thick and which hung over the water as a sort of
cave, we could see the legs and lower halves of dead Emperor chicks
hanging through, and even in one place a dead adult. I hope to make a
picture of the whole quaint incident, for it was a corner crammed full of
Imperial history in the light of what we already knew, and it would
otherwise have been about as unintelligible as any group of animate or
inanimate nature could possibly have been. As it is, it throws more light
on the life history of this strangely primitive bird....

"We were joking in the boat as we rowed under these cliffs and saying it
would be a short-lived amusement to see the overhanging cliff part
company and fall on us. So we were glad to find that we were rowing back
to the ship and already 200 or 300 yards away from the place and in open
water when there was a noise like crackling thunder and a huge plunge
into the sea and a smother of rock dust like the smoke of an explosion,
and we realized that the very thing had happened which we had just been
talking about. Altogether it was a very exciting row, for before we got
on board we had the pleasure of seeing the ship shoved in so close to
these cliffs by a belt of heavy pack ice that to us it appeared a toss-up
whether she got out again or got forced in against the rocks. She had no
time or room to turn, and got clear by backing out through the belt of
pack stern first, getting heavy bumps under the counter and on the rudder
as she did so, for the ice was heavy and the swell considerable."
^[84]

Westward of Cape Crozier the sides of Mount Terror slope down to the sea,
forming a possible landing-place in calm weather. Here there is a large
Adélie penguin rookery in summer, and it was here that the Discovery left
a record of her movements tied to a post to guide the relieving ship the
following year. It was the return of a sledge party which tried to reach
this record from the Barrier that led to Vince's terrible death.
^[85]
As
we coasted along we could see this post quite plainly, looking as new as
the day it was erected, and we know now that there is communication with
the Barrier behind, while this rookery itself is free from the blizzards
which sweep out to sea by Cape Crozier. It was therefore an excellent
place to winter and it was a considerable disappointment to find that it
was impossible to land.

This was the first sight we had of a rookery of the little Adélie
penguin. Hundreds of thousands of birds dotted the shore, and there were
many thousands in the sea round the ship. As we came to know these
rookeries better we came to look upon these quaint creatures more as
familiar friends than as casual acquaintances. Whatever a penguin does
has individuality, and he lays bare his whole life for all to see. He
cannot fly away. And because he is quaint in all that he does, but still
more because he is fighting against bigger odds than any other bird, and
fighting always with the most gallant pluck, he comes to be considered as
something apart from the ordinary bird—sometimes solemn, sometimes
humorous, enterprising, chivalrous, cheeky—and always (unless you are
driving a dog-team) a welcome and, in some ways, an almost human friend.

The alternative landing-place to Cape Crozier was somewhere in McMurdo
Sound, the essential thing being that we should have access to and from
the Barrier, such communication having to be by sea-ice, since the land
is for the most part impassable. As we steamed from Cape Crozier to Cape
Bird, the N.W. extremity of Ross Island, we carried out a detailed
running survey.

When we neared Cape Bird and Beaufort Island we could see that there was
much pack in the mouth of the Strait. By keeping close in to the land we
avoided the worst of the trouble, and "as we rounded Cape Bird we came in
sight of the old well-remembered landmarks—Mount Discovery and the
Western Mountains—seen dimly through a hazy atmosphere. It was good to
see them again, and perhaps after all we are better this side of the
Island. It gives one a homely feeling to see such a familiar scene."
^[86]

Right round from Cape Crozier to Cape Royds the coast is cold and
forbidding, and for the most part heavily crevassed. West of Cape Bird
are some small penguin rookeries, and high up on the ice slopes could be
seen some grey granite boulders. These are erratics, brought by ice from
the Western Mountains, and are evidence of a warmer past when the Barrier
rose some two thousand feet higher than it does now, and stretched many
hundreds of miles farther out to sea. But now the Antarctic is becoming
colder, the deposition of snow is therefore farther north, and the
formation of ice correspondingly less.