The Worst Journey in the World (22 page)

We had two officers who had been with Shackleton in his 1908
Expedition—Priestley, who was in our Northern Party, and Day, who was in
charge of our motors. Priestley with two others sledged over to Cape
Royds and has left an account of the old hut there:

"After pitching tent Levick and I went over to the hut to forage. On the
way I visited Derrick Point and took a large seven-pound tin of butter
while Levick opened up the hut. It was very dark inside but I pulled the
boarding down from the windows so that we could see all right. It was
very funny to see everything lying about just as we had left it, in that
last rush to get off in the lull of the blizzard. On Marston's bunk was a
sixpenny copy of the Story of Bessie Costrell, which some one had
evidently read and left open. Perhaps what brought the old times back
again more than anything else was the fact that as I came out of the
larder the sleeve of my wind clothes caught the tap of the copper and
turned it on. When I heard the drip of the water I turned instinctively
and turned the tap off, almost expecting to hear Bobs' raucous voice
cursing me for my clumsiness. Perhaps what strikes one more forcibly than
anything else is the fact that nothing has been disturbed. On the table
was the remains of a batch of bread that Bobs had cooked for us and that
was only partially consumed before the Nimrod called for us. Some of the
rolls showed the impression of bites given to them in 1909. All round the
bread were the sauces, pickles, pepper and salt of our usual standing
lunch, and a half-opened tin of gingerbreads was a witness to the dryness
of the climate for they were still crisp as the day they were opened.

"In the cubicle near the larder were the loose tins that poor Armytage
and myself had collected from all round the hut before we left.

"On the shelves of my cubicle are still stacked the magazines and paper
brought down by the relief ship. Nothing is changed at all except the
company. It is almost dismal. I expect to see people come in through the
door after a walk over the surrounding hills.

"We had not much time to look round us; for Campbell was cooking in the
tent, so we slung a few tins of jam, a plum-pudding, some tea, and
gingerbreads into a sack, and returned to camp. By this time it was
snowing heavily and continued to do so after dinner so that we turned in
immediately (1.30 P.M.) and went off to sleep. One thing worth mentioning
is that on several of the drifts are well-defined hoof marks, some of
them looking so new that we could have sworn that they had been made this
year.

"The Old Sport
(Levick)
gave us a start by suddenly announcing that he
could see a ship quite close, and for some time we were on tenterhooks,
but his ship proved to be the Terra Nova ice-anchored off the Skuary.

"The whole place is very eerie, there is such a feeling of life about it.
Not only do I feel it but the others do also. Last night after I turned
in I could have sworn that I heard people shouting to each other.

"I thought that I had only got an attack of nerves but Campbell asked me
if I had heard any shouting, for he had certainly done so. It must have
been the seals calling to each other, but it certainly did sound most
human. We are getting so worked up that we should not be a bit surprised
to see a settlement of Japanese or some other such people some day when
we stroll round towards Blacksand Beach. The Old Sport created some
amusement this evening by opening a tin of Nestlé's milk at both ends
instead of making the two holes at one end. He informed us that he had
got so used to using two whole tins of milk for cocoa for fourteen people
at night that he always opened them that way.

"As a consequence we have to spend most of our spare time making bungs to
keep the milk in the tin."
^[109]

Meanwhile, as was to be expected, the action of the, I suspect, abnormal
summer sea temperature was showing its effect upon the sea-ice. Sea-ice
thaws from below when the temperature of the water rises. The northern
ice goes out first here, being next to the open water, but big thaw pools
form at the same time wherever a current of water flows over shallows, as
at the end of Cape Evans, Hut Point and Cape Armitage.

On January 17 the ice was breaking away between the point of Cape Evans
and the ship, although a road still remained fast between the ship and
the shore. The ship began to get up steam, but the fast ice broke away
quickly that night. I believe they got steam in three hours, twelve hours
being the time generally allowed: only just in time, however, for she
broke adrift as it was reported. The next morning she made fast to the
ice only 200 yards from the ice-foot of the Cape.

"For the present the position is extraordinarily comfortable. With a
southerly blow she would simply bind on to the ice, receiving great
shelter from the end of the Cape. With a northerly blow she might turn
rather close to the shore, where the soundings run to three fathoms, but
behind such a stretch of ice she could scarcely get a sea or swell
without warning. It looks a wonderfully comfortable little nook, but of
course one can be certain of nothing in this place; one knows from
experience how deceptive the appearance of security may be."
^[110]

The ship's difficulties were largely due to the shortage of coal. Again
on the night of January 20-21 we had an anxious time.

"Fearing a little trouble I went out of the hut in the middle of the
night and saw at once that she was having a bad time—the ice was
breaking with a northerly swell and the wind increasing, with the ship on
dead lee shore; luckily the ice anchors had been put well in on the floe
and some still held. Pennell was getting up steam and his men struggling
to replace the anchors.

"We got out the men and gave some help. At 6 steam was up, and I was
right glad to see the ship back out to windward, leaving us to recover
anchors and hawsers."
^[111]

A big berg drove in just after the ship had got away, and grounded where
she had been lying. The ship returned in the afternoon, and it seems that
she was searching round for an anchorage, and trying to look behind this
berg. There was a strongish northerly wind blowing. The currents and
soundings round Cape Evans were then unknown. The current was setting
strongly from the north through the strip of sea which divides
Inaccessible Island from Cape Evans, a distance of some two-thirds of a
mile. The engines were going astern, but the current and wind were too
much for her, and the ship ran aground, being fast for some considerable
distance aft—some said as far as the mainmast.

"Visions of the ship failing to return to New Zealand and of sixty people
waiting here arose in my mind with sickening pertinacity, and the only
consolation I could draw from such imaginations was the determination
that the southern work should go on as before—meanwhile the least ill
possible seemed to be an extensive lightening of the ship with boats as
the tide was evidently high when she struck—a terribly depressing
prospect.

"Some three or four of us watched it gloomily from the shore whilst all
was bustle on board, the men shifting cargo aft. Pennell tells me they
shifted 10 tons in a very short time.

"The first ray of hope came when by careful watching one could see that
the ship was turning very slowly, then one saw the men running from side
to side and knew that an attempt was being made to roll her off. The
rolling produced a more rapid turning movement at first, and then she
seemed to hang again. But only for a short time; the engines had been
going astern all the time and presently a slight movement became
apparent. But we only knew she was getting clear when we heard cheers on
board, and more cheers from the whaler.

"Then she gathered stern way and was clear. The relief was
enormous."
^[112]

All this took some time, and Scott himself came back into the hut with us
and went on bagging provisions for the Depôt journey. At such times of
real disaster he was a very philosophical man. We were not yet ready to
go sledging, but on January 23 the ice in North Bay all went out, and
that in South Bay began to follow it. Because this was our road to the
Barrier, it was suddenly decided that we must start on the Depôt journey
the following day or perhaps not at all. Already it was impossible to get
sledges south off the Cape: but there was a way to walk the ponies along
the land until they could be scrambled down a steep rubbly slope on to
sea-ice which still remained. Would it float away before we got there? It
was touch and go. "One breathes a prayer that the Road holds for the few
remaining hours. It goes in one place between a berg in open water and a
large pool of the Glacier face—it may be weak in that part, and at any
moment the narrow isthmus may break away. We are doing it on a very
narrow margin."
^[113]

The dropping of the daylight in the west.
ROBERT BROWNING.

January to March 1911

SCOTT MEARES CREAN
WILSON ATKINSON FORDE
LIEUT. EVANS CHERRY-GARRARD DIMITRI
BOWERS GRAN
OATES KEOHANE

Imaginative friends of the thirteen men who started from Cape Evans on
January 24, 1911, may have thought of them as athletes, trained for some
weeks or months to endure the strains which they were to face, sleeping a
good nine hours a night, eating carefully regulated meals and doing an
allotted task each day under scientific control.

They would be far from the mark. For weeks we had turned in at midnight
too tired to take off our clothes, and had been lucky if we were allowed
to sleep until 5 A.M. We had eaten our meals when we could, and we had
worked in the meantime just as hard as it was physically possible to do.
If we sat down on a packing-case we went to sleep.

And we finally left the camp in a state of hurry bordering upon panic.
Since the ice to the south of us, the road to the Barrier, was being
nibbled away by thaw, winds and tides, it was impossible to lead the
ponies down from the Cape on to the sea-ice. The open sea was before us
and on our right front. It was necessary to lead them up among the lava
blocks which lay on the escarpment of Erebus, south-eastwards towards
Land's End, and thence to slide them down a steep but rubbly slope to the
ice which still remained. As a matter of fact that ice went out the very
next day.

During the last two days provisions had been bagged with the utmost
despatch; sledges packed; letters scribbled; clothing sorted and rough
alterations to it made. Scott was busy, with Bowers' help, making such
arrangements as could be suggested for a further year's stay, for which
the ship was to order the necessaries. Oates was busy weighing out the
pony food for the journey, sorting harness, and generally managing a most
unruly mob of ponies. Many were the arguments as to the relative value of
a pair of socks or their equivalent weight in tobacco, for we were
allowed 12 lbs. of private gear apiece, to consist of everything which we
did not habitually wear on our bodies. This included such things as:

Sleeping-boots.
Sleeping-socks.
Extra pair of day socks.
A shirt.
Tobacco and pipe.
Notebook for diary and pencil.
Extra balaclava helmet.
Extra woollen mitts.
Housewife containing buttons, needles, darning needles,
thread and wool.
Extra pair of finnesko.
Big safety-pins with which to hang up our socks.
And perhaps one small book.

My most vivid recollection of the day we started is the sight of Bowers,
out of breath, very hot, and in great pain from a bad knock which he had
given his knee against a rock, being led forward by his big pony Uncle
Bill, over whom temporarily he had but little control. He had been left
behind in the camp, giving last instructions about the storage of cases
and management of provisions, and had practically lost himself in trying
to follow us over what was then unknown ground. He was wearing all the
clothing which was not included in his personal gear, for he did not
think it fair to give the pony the extra weight. He had bruised his leg
in an ugly way, and for many days he came to me to bandage it. He was
afraid that if he let the doctors see it they would forbid him to go
forward. He had had no sleep for seventy-two hours.

That first night (January 24) we pitched our inexperienced camp not far
from Hut Point. But our first taste of sledging was not without incident.
Starting with the ponies only we walked them to Glacier Tongue, where the
ice and open water joined, and as we went we watched the ship pass us out
in the Strait and moor up to the end of the Tongue. Getting the ponies
across the Tongue with its shallow but numerous crevasses and holes was
ticklish work, but we tethered them safely off the Terra Nova, which
meanwhile was landing dogs, sledges and gear. Then we got some lunch on
board. A large lead in the sea-ice to the south of the Tongue
necessitated some hours' work in man-hauling all sledges along the back
of the Tongue until a way could be found down on to safe ice. We then
followed with the ponies. "If a pony falls into one of these holes I
shall sit down and cry," said Oates. Within three minutes my pony was
wallowing, with only his head and forelegs visible, in a mess of brash
and snow, which had concealed a crack in the sea-ice which was obviously
not going to remain much longer in its present position. We got lashings
round him and hauled him out. Poor Guts! He was fated to drown: but in an
hour he appeared to have forgotten all about his mishap, and was pulling
his first load towards Hut Point as gallantly as always.

The next day we took further stores from the ship to the camp which had
formed. Some of these loads were to be left on the edge of the Barrier
when we got there, but for the present we had to relay, that is, take one
load forward and come back for another.