The Worst Journey in the World (55 page)

"At lunch camp Scott packed up and followed us. We overhauled Atkinson
about 1½ hours later, he having camped, and we were not sorry, as in
addition to marching against a fresh southerly breeze the light brought a
tremendous strain on the eyes in following tracks."
^[184]
A little more
than eight miles for the day's total.

We carried these depressing conditions for three more marches, that is
till the morning of November 13. The surface was wretched, the weather
horrid, the snow persistent, covering everything with soft downy flakes,
inch upon inch, and mile upon mile. There are glimpses of despondency in
the diaries. "If this should come as an exception, our luck will be truly
awful. The camp is very silent and cheerless, signs that things are going
awry."
^[185]
"The weather was horrid, overcast, gloomy, snowy. One's
spirits became very low."
^[186]
"I expected these marches to be a little
difficult, but not near so bad as to-day."
^[187]
Indefinite conditions
always tried Scott most: positive disasters put him into more cheerful
spirits than most. In the big gale coming South when the ship nearly
sank, and when we lost one of the cherished motors through the sea-ice,
his was one of the few cheerful faces I saw. Even when the ship ran
aground off Cape Evans he was not despondent. But this kind of thing
irked him. Bowers wrote: "The unpleasant weather and bad surface, and
Chinaman's indisposition, combined to make the outlook unpleasant, and on
arrival [in camp] I was not surprised to find that Scott had a grievance.
He felt that in arranging the consumption of forage his own unit had not
been favoured with the same reduction as ours, in fact accused me of
putting upon his three horses to save my own. We went through the weights
in detail after our meal, and, after a certain amount of argument,
decided to carry on as we were going. I can quite understand his
feelings, and after our experience of last year a bad day like this makes
him fear our beasts are going to fail us. The Talent [i.e. the doctors]
examined Chinaman, who begins to show signs of wear. Poor ancient little
beggar, he ought to be a pensioner instead of finishing his days on a job
of this sort. Jehu looks pretty rocky too, but seeing that we did not
expect him to reach the Glacier Tongue, and that he has now done more
than 100 miles from Cape Evans, one really does not know what to expect
of these creatures. Certainly Titus thinks, as he has always said, that
they are the most unsuitable scrap-heap crowd of unfit creatures that
could possibly be got together."
^[188]

"The weather was about as poisonous as one could wish; a fresh breeze and
driving snow from the E. with an awful surface. The recently fallen snow
thickly covered the ground with powdery stuff that the unfortunate ponies
fairly wallowed in. If it was only ourselves to consider I should not
mind a bit, but to see our best ponies being hit like this at the start
is most distressing. A single march like that of last night must shorten
their usefulness by days, and here we are a fortnight out, and barely
one-third of the distance to the glacier covered, with every pony showing
signs of wear. Victor looks a lean and lanky beast compared with his
condition two weeks ago."
^[189]

But the ponies began to go better; and it was about this time that Jehu
was styled the Barrier Wonder, and Chinaman the Thunderbolt. "Our four
ponies have suffered most," writes Bowers. "I don't agree with Titus that
it is best to march them right through without a lunch camp. They were
undoubtedly pretty tired, and worst of all did not go their feeds
properly. It was a fine warm morning for them (Nov. 13); +15°, our
warmest temperature hitherto. In the afternoon it came on to snow in
large flakes like one would get at home. I have never seen such snow down
here before; it makes the surface very bad for the sledges. The ponies'
manes and rugs were covered in little knots of ice."

The next march (November 13-14) was rather better, though the going was
very deep and heavy, and all the ponies were showing signs of wear and
tear. This was followed by a delightfully warm day, and all the animals
were standing drowsily in the sunshine. We could see the land far away
behind us, the first sight of land we had had for many days. On November
15 we reached One Ton Depôt, having travelled a hundred and thirty miles
from Hut Point.

The two sledges left standing were still upright, and the tattered
remains of a flag flapped over the main cairn. In a salt tin lashed to
the bamboo flag-pole was a note from Lieutenant Evans to say that he had
gone on with the motor party five days before, and would continue
man-hauling to 80° 30' S. and await us there. "He has done something over
30 miles in 2½ days—exceedingly good going."
^[190]
We dug out the cairn,
which we found just as we had left it except that there was a big tongue
of drift, level with the top of the cairn to leeward, and running about
150 yards to N.E., showing that the prevailing wind here is S.W. Nine
months before we had sprinkled some oats on the surface of the snow
hoping to get a measurement of the accretion of snow during the winter.
Unfortunately we were unable to find the oats again, but other evidence
went to show that the snow deposit was very small. A minimum thermometer
which was lashed with great care to a framework registered -73°. After
the temperatures already experienced by us on the Barrier during the
winter and spring this was surprisingly high, especially as our minimum
temperatures were taken under the sledge, which means that the
thermometer is shaded from radiation, while this thermometer at One Ton
was left open to the sky. On the Winter Journey we found that a shaded
thermometer registered -69° when an unshaded one registered -75°, a
difference of 6°. All the provisions left here were found to be in
excellent condition.

We then had a prolonged council of war. This meant that Scott called
Bowers, and perhaps Oates, into our tent after supper was finished in the
morning. Somehow these conferences were always rather serio-comic. On
this occasion, as was usually the case, the question was ponies. It was
decided to wait here one day and rest them, as there was ample food. The
main discussion centred round the amount of forage to be taken on from
here, while the state of the ponies, the amount they could pull and the
distance they could go had to be taken into consideration.

"Oates thinks the ponies will get through, but that they have lost
condition quicker than he expected. Considering his usually pessimistic
attitude this must be thought a hopeful view. Personally I am much more
hopeful. I think that a good many of the beasts are actually in better
form than when they started, and that there is no need to be alarmed
about the remainder, always excepting the weak ones which we have always
regarded with doubt. Well, we must wait and see how things go."
^[191]

The decision made was to take just enough food to get the ponies to the
glacier, allowing for the killing of some of them before that date. It
was obvious that Jehu and Chinaman could not go very much farther, and
it was also necessary that ponies should be killed in order to feed the
dogs. The two dog-teams were carrying about a week's pony food, but they
were unable to advance more than a fortnight from One Ton without killing
ponies.

This decision practically meant that Scott abandoned the idea of taking
ponies up the glacier. This was a great relief, for the crevassed state
of the lower reaches of the glacier as described by Shackleton led us to
believe that the attempt was suicidal. All the winter our brains were
exercised to try and devise some method by which the ponies could be
driven from behind, and by which the connection between pony and sledge
could be loosed if the pony fell into a crevasse, but I confess that
there seemed little chance of this happening. From all we saw of the
glacier I am convinced that there is no reasonable chance of getting
ponies up it, and that dogs could only be driven down it if the way up
was most carefully surveyed and kept on the return. I am sure that in
this kind of uncertainty the mental strain on the leader of a party is
less than that on his men. The leader knows quite well what he thinks
worth while risking or not: in this case Scott probably was always of the
opinion that it would not be worth while taking ponies on to the glacier.
The pony leaders, however, only knew that the possibility was ahead of
them. I can remember now the relief with which we heard that it was not
intended that Wilson should take Nobby, the fittest of our ponies,
farther than the Gateway.

Up to now Christopher had lived up to his reputation, as the following
extracts from Bowers' diary will show: "Three times we downed him, and he
got up and threw us about, with all four of us hanging on like grim
death. He nearly had me under him once; he seems fearfully strong, but it
is a pity he wastes so much good energy.... Christopher, as usual, was
strapped on three legs and then got down on his knees. He gets more
cunning each time, and if he does not succeed in biting or kicking one of
us before long it won't be his fault. He finds the soft snow does not
hurt his knees like the sea-ice, and so plunges about on them
ad lib
.
One's finnesko are so slippery that it is difficult to exert full
strength on him, and to-day he bowled Oates over and got away altogether.
Fortunately the lashing on his fourth leg held fast, and we were able to
secure him when he rejoined the other animals. Finally he lay down, and
thought he had defeated us, but we had the sledge connected up by that
time, and as he got up we rushed him forward before he had time to kick
over the traces.... Dimitri came and gave us a hand with Chris. Three of
us hung on to him while the other two connected up the sledge. We had a
struggle for over twenty minutes, and he managed to tread on me, but no
damage done.... Got Chris in by a dodge. Titus did away with his back
strap, and nearly had him away unaided before he realized that the hated
sledge was fast to him. Unfortunately he started off just too soon, and
bolted with only one trace fast. This pivoted him to starboard, and he
charged the line. I expected a mix-up, but he stopped at the wall between
Bones and Snatcher, and we cast off and cleared sledge before trying
again. By laying the traces down the side of the sledge instead of ahead
we got him off his guard again, and he was away before he knew what had
occurred.... We had a bad time with Chris again. He remembered having
been bluffed before, and could not be got near the sledge at all. Three
times he broke away, but fortunately he always ran back among the other
ponies, and not out on to the Barrier. Finally we had to down him, and he
was so tired with his recent struggles that after one abortive attempt we
got him fast and away."

Meanwhile it was not so much the difficulties of sledging as the
depressing blank conditions in which our march was so often made, that
gave us such troubles as we had. The routine of a tent makes a lot of
difference. Scott's tent was a comfortable one to live in, and I was
always glad when I was told to join it, and sorry to leave. He was
himself extraordinarily quick, and no time was ever lost by his party in
camping or breaking camp. He was most careful, some said over-careful
but I do not think so, that everything should be neat and shipshape, and
there was a recognized place for everything. On the Depôt Journey we were
bidden to see that every particle of snow was beaten off our clothing and
finnesko before entering the tent: if it was drifting we had to do this
after entering and the snow was carefully cleared off the floor-cloth.
Afterwards each tent was supplied with a small brush with which to
perform this office. In addition to other obvious advantages this
materially helped to keep clothing, finnesko, and sleeping-bags dry, and
thus prolong the life of furs. "After all is said and done," said Wilson
one day after supper, "the best sledger is the man who sees what has to
be done, and does it—and says nothing about it." Scott agreed. And if
you were "sledging with the Owner" you had to keep your eyes wide open
for the little things which cropped up, and do them quickly, and say
nothing about them. There is nothing so irritating as the man who is
always coming in and informing all and sundry that he has repaired his
sledge, or built a wall, or filled the cooker, or mended his socks.

I moved into Scott's tent for the first time in the middle of the Depôt
Journey, and was enormously impressed by the comfort which a careful
routine of this nature evoked. There was a homelike air about the tent at
supper time, and, though a lunch camp in the middle of the night is
always rather bleak, there was never anything slovenly. Another thing
which struck me even more forcibly was the cooking. We were of course on
just the same ration as the tent from which I had come. I was hungry and
said so. "Bad cooking," said Wilson shortly; and so it was. For in two or
three days the sharpest edge was off my hunger. Wilson and Scott had
learned many a cooking tip in the past, and, instead of the same old meal
day by day, the weekly ration was so manoeuvred by a clever cook that
it was seldom quite the same meal. Sometimes pemmican plain, or thicker
pemmican with some arrowroot mixed with it: at others we surrendered a
biscuit and a half apiece and had a dry hoosh, i.e. biscuit fried in
pemmican with a little water added, and a good big cup of cocoa to
follow. Dry hooshes also saved oil. There were cocoa and tea upon which
to ring the changes, or better still 'teaco' which combined the
stimulating qualities of tea with the food value of cocoa. Then much
could be done with the dessert-spoonful of raisins which was our daily
whack. They were good soaked in the tea, but best perhaps in with the
biscuits and pemmican as a dry hoosh. "You are going far to earn my
undying gratitude, Cherry," was a satisfied remark of Scott one evening
when, having saved, unbeknownst to my companions, some of their daily
ration of cocoa, arrowroot, sugar and raisins, I made a "chocolate
hoosh." But I am afraid he had indigestion next morning. There were meals
when we had interesting little talks, as when I find in my diary that:
"we had a jolly lunch meal, discussing authors. Barrie, Galsworthy and
others are personal friends of Scott. Some one told Max Beerbohm that he
was like Captain Scott, and immediately, so Scott assured us, he grew a
beard."