South with Scott Part 7

Horseradish Sauce.

Potatoes a la mode and Brussels Sprouts.

Plum Pudding. Mince Pies.

Caviare Antarctic.

Crystallised fruits. Chocolate Bonbons.

b.u.t.ter Bonbons. Walnut Toffee.

Almonds and Raisins.

_Wines._

Sherry, Champagne, Brandy Punch, Liqueur.

Cigars, Cigarettes, and Tobacco.

Snapdragon.

Pineapple Custard. Raspberry jellies.

and what was left of the Buszard's cake!

The menu was, needless to say, Wilson's work, the exquisite dishes Clissold produced, the maitre d'hotel was Birdie, and Cherry-Garrard the producer of surprises in the shape of toys which adorned the Christmas Tree that followed on the dinner. Everybody got something from the tree, which was in reality no tree at all, for it was a cleverly constructed dummy, with sticks for branches and coloured paper leaves. Still, it carried little fairy candles and served its purpose well.

Then I must not forget the greatest treat of all: an exhibition of slides showing the life about our winter quarters and the general work of the Expedition from the starting away in New Zealand to this actual day almost in the hut. The slides were wonderful and they showed every stage of the ice through which we had come and in which we lived. There were penguin pictures, whales and seals, bird life in the pack, flash light photographs of people and ponies, pictures of Erebus and other splendid and familiar landmarks, and, in short, a magnificent pictorial record of events, for Ponting had been everywhere with his camera, and it is only to be regretted that the Expedition did not take him to the Pole. This was, of course, impossible, when everything had to give way to food.

Following the photographic display and the Christmas Tree came the only Antarctic dance we enjoyed. Few of us remember much about it for we were very merry, thanks to the wine, and there was considerable horseplay. I remember dancing with the cook whilst Oates danced with Anton. Everybody took a turn, and a.s.sociated with this dance I might mention that Clissold so far forgot himself as to call Scott "Good old Truegg." Truegg was the composition used by us for cooking in various ways omelets, b.u.t.tered eggs, puddings, and cakes of all kinds, and, although it was a great boon to the Expedition, we had by this time tired of it. Still, we used it as a term of endearment, but n.o.body in his sober senses would have dreamt of calling our much respected Commander "Good old Truegg"; the brandy punch must have been responsible for Clissold's mixing up of names! We had now arrived at the stage when it was time to shut up, the officers became interested in an aurora display and gradually rolled off to bed. It was left to me to see the seamen turned in; they were good-humoured but obstreperous, and not until 2 a.m. did silence and order once more reign in the hut.

Very wisely our leader decided on June 23 being kept as a day of rest; our digestions were upset and we took this time off to make and mend clothes, and returned to our winter routine, a little subdued perhaps, on June 24.

CHAPTER IX

PRELIMINARY EXPLORATIONS

So much for the winter life up to date; no great excitements, nothing untoward, but a remarkable bonhomie obtaining in our little company despite the tedium of so many days of winter gloom. On June 27 Dr. Wilson with Bowers and Cherry-Garrard started on a remarkable journey to Cape Crozier, nearly seventy miles distant from Cape Evans, via Hut Point and the Barrier. The object of these intrepid souls was to observe the incubation of the Emperor Penguins at their rookery, which was known to exist near the junction point of the Barrier Edge with the rocky cliff south of Cape Crozier. It must be borne in mind that this was the first Antarctic midwinter journey, and that the three men must of necessity face abnormally low temperature's and unheard of hards.h.i.+ps whilst making the sledge journey over the icy Barrier. We had gathered enough knowledge on the autumn sledge journeys and in the days of the Discovery expedition to tell us this, so that it was not without considerable misgivings that Captain Scott permitted Wilson to carry the winter expedition to Cape Crozier into being. The scope of my little volume only permits me to tell this story in brief. No very detailed account has yet been published, although Cherry-Garrard, the only survivor of the three, wrote the far too modest memoir of the journey which has been published in Volume II of "Scott's Last Expedition."

Apart from the zoological knowledge Wilson hoped to gain from the Cape Crozier visit in mid-winter, there was a wealth of other information to be collected concerning the Barrier conditions, particularly the meteorological conditions, but above all we knew that with such quick and reliable observers as Wilson and his companions we must derive additional experience in the matter of sledging rations, for the party had agreed to make experiments in order to arrive at the standard ration to be adopted for the colder weather we must face during the second half of the forthcoming Polar journey.

Wilson took two small 9 ft. sledges, and after being photographed was helped out to Glacier Tongue by a small hurrah party. In the bad light he was handicapped from the very first, and it took the party two days to get on to the Ice Barrier. Their progress was dreadfully slow, which was not to be wondered at, for they were pulling loads of 250 lb. per man, the surfaces were beyond anything they had faced hitherto, and the temperatures seldom above 60 degrees. Relay work had to be resorted to, and in consequence the party took eighteen days to reach Cape Crozier.

They met with good weather, that is, calm weather, to begin with, but the bad surfaces handicapped them severely. After rounding Cape Mackay they reached a wind-swept area and met with a series of blizzards. Their best light was moonlight, and they were denied this practically by overcast skies. Picture their hards.h.i.+ps: frozen bags to sleep in, frozen finnesko to put their feet in every time they struck camp, finger-tips always getting frost-bitten and sometimes toes and heels; no comfort was to be derived within camp, for, at the best, they could only sit and s.h.i.+ver when preparing the food, and once the bags were unrolled to sleep in more trouble came. It is on record that Cherry-Garrard took as long as three-quarters of an hour to break his way into his sleeping-bag, and once inside it he merely shook and froze. The party used a double tent for this journey, that is to say, a light lining was fitted on the inner side of the five bamboo tent poles, so that when the ordinary wind-proof tent cloth was spread over the poles an air s.p.a.ce was provided. There was, I may say, a sharp difference of opinion as to the value of the tent; Wilson's party swore by it and Scott was always loud in its praise.

The sailors hated it and despised it; they always argued, when consulted on the subject of the double tent, that it collected snow and rime and added much to the weights we had to drag along. Perhaps they were right, and I remember one occasion when two members of the Expedition dumped the inner lining after carrying it many hundred miles with the remark, "Good-bye, you blighter, you've had a d.a.m.n good ride!"

The scene inside the little green tent baffles description: the three men's breath and the steam from the cooker settles in no time on the sides of the tent in a thick, white rime; the least movement shakes this down in a shower which brings clammy discomfort to all; the dimmest of light is given by the sledging lantern with its edible candle (for Messrs. Price and Co. had made our candles eatable and not poisonous), everything is frozen stiff, fur boots, bags and fur mitts break if roughly handled, for they are as hard as boards. The cold has carved deep ruts in the faces of the little company who, despite their sufferings and discomforts, smile and keep cheerful without apparent effort. This cheerfulness and the fragrant smell of the cooking pemmican are the two redeeming features of a dreadful existence, but the discomforts are only a foretaste of what is to come--one night the temperature fell to 77 degrees below zero, that is 109 degrees of frost. There is practically no record of such low temperature, although Captain Scott found that Roald Amundsen in one of his northern journeys encountered something nearly as bad. One cannot wonder that Wilson's party scarcely slept at all, but their outward experiences were nothing to what they put up with at Cape Crozier, which was reached on July 15. To get on to the slopes of Mount Terror near Crozier the party climbed over great pressure ridges and up a steep slope to a position between the end of a moraine terrace and the conspicuous hillock known as The Knoll. In the gap here the last camp was made in a windswept snow hollow, a stone hut was constructed behind a land ridge above this hollow, the party using a quant.i.ty of loose rocks and hard snow to build with. Cherry-Garrard did most of the building, while the others provided the material, for, in his methodical way, Cherry had built a model hut before leaving Cape Evans. The hut was 800 ft. above sea-level, roofed with canvas, with one of the sledges as a rafter to support the canvas roof.

On the 19th July the party descended by the snow slopes to the Emperor penguin rookery. They had great trouble in making this descent, on account of creva.s.ses in the ice slopes which overhung the level way under the rock cliffs. As a matter of fact, the attempt on the 19th proved abortive, although the little band got close to the rookery. They reached it successfully on the 20th when the light was almost failing, and were mortified to find only about one hundred Emperor penguins in place of the two or three thousand birds which the rookery had been found to contain in the "Discovery" days. Possibly the early date accounted for the absence of Emperors; however, half a dozen eggs were collected, and three of these found their way home to England. Wilson picked up rounded pieces of ice at the rookery which the stupid Emperors had been cheris.h.i.+ng, fondly imagining they were eggs; evidently the maternal instinct of the Emperor penguin is very strong.

The party killed and skinned three birds and then returned to the shelter of the stone hut, not without difficulty, it is true. It is worthy of note that the three birds killed by the party were very thickly blubbered, and the oil obtained from them burned well.

The Ross Sea was found to be frozen over as far as the horizon. When the party got back to their shelter two eggs had burst and saturated Cherry-Garrard's mitts. This optimistic young man found good even in this, for he said that on the way home to Cape Evans his mitts thawed out far more easily than Bowers's did, and attributed the little triumph to the grease in the broken egg! That night they slept for the first time in the stone hut; perhaps it was fortunate that they did so for it was blowing hard and the wind developed into a terrific storm.

One of the hurricane gusts of wind swept the roof of the hut away, and for two days the unfortunate party lay in their bags half smothered by fine drifting snow. The second day was Dr. Wilson's birthday; he told me afterwards that had the gale not abated when it did all three men must have perished. They had not dared to stir out of the meagre shelter afforded by their sleeping-bags. Wilson prayed hard that they might be spared. His prayer was answered, it is true, but before another year had pa.s.sed two of this courageous little band lost their lives in their eager thirst for scientific knowledge.

When the three men crept out of their bags into the dull winter gloom they groped about and searched for their tent, which had blown away from its pitch near the stone hut. By an extraordinary piece of good fortune it was recovered, scarcely damaged, a quarter of a mile away.

Cherry-Garrard describes the roar of the wind as it whistled in their shelter to have been just like the rush of an express train through a tunnel.

Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard started home after this, but were caught by another blizzard, which imprisoned them in their tent for another forty-eight hours. They were now running short of oil for warming and cooking purposes, but the little party won through after a very rough march full of horrible hards.h.i.+ps and discomforts, and reached Cape Evans on the 1st August, when they had faced the dreadful winter weather conditions on the cruel Ice Barrier for five weeks. What forlorn objects they did look: it was pathetic to see them as they staggered into the hut. Wilson, when he could give a collected account of what he and his party had faced, was loud in the praise of Birdy and Cherry.

The party were examined by Atkinson, who gave some direction and advice concerning their immediate diet--they seemed to want bread, b.u.t.ter, and jam most, and the little loaves provided by Clissold disappeared with extraordinary speed. They were suffering from want of sleep, but were all right in a few days. One of the remarkable features of this journey was the increase of weights due to ice collecting in their sleeping-bags, gear and equipment. Their three bags, which weighed forty-seven pounds on leaving Cape Evans, had increased their weight to one hundred and eighteen at the conclusion of the trip. Other weights increased in the same proportion, and the sledge had dragged very heavily in consequence.

The three men when they arrived were almost encased with ice, and I well remember undressing poor Wilson in the cubicle which he and I shared. His clothes had almost to be cut off him.

From this journey, as stated, we evolved the final sledging ration for the Summit, it was to consist of:

16 ozs. biscuit.

12 " pemmican.

3 " sugar.

2 " b.u.t.ter.

0.7 " tea.

0.6 " cocoa.

daily 34.3 ozs.

It may seem little enough for a hungry sledger, but, no one could possibly eat that amount in a temperate climate; it was a fine filling ration even for the Antarctic. The pemmican consisted of the finest beef extract, with 60 per cent. pure fat, and it cooked up into a thick tasty soup. It was specially made for us by Messrs. Beauvais of Copenhagen.

No casualties occurred during the winter, but Dr. Atkinson sustained a severely frost-bitten hand on July 4 when we had one of our winter blizzards. Certain thermometers had been placed in positions on the sea ice and up on the Ramp by Simpson, and these we were in the habit of visiting during the course of our exercise; the thermometer reading was done by volunteers who signified their intention to Simpson in order to avoid duplication of observation. On blizzard days we left them alone, but Atkinson, seeing that the wind had modified in the afternoon, zealously started out over the ice and was absent from dinner. Search parties were sent in various directions, each taking a sledge with sleeping-bags, brandy flask, thermos full of cocoa, and first-aid equipment. Flares were lit and kept going on Wind Vale Hill, Simpson's meteorological station overlooking the hut. Search was made in all directions by us, and difficulty was experienced due to light snowfall.

Atkinson fetched up at Tent Island, apparently, which he walked round for hours, and, in trying to make the Cape again, became hopelessly lost, and, losing one of his mitts for a time, fell into a tide crack and did not get home till close upon midnight. Search parties came in one by one and were glad to hear the good news of Atkinson's return. My own party, working to the south of Cape Evans, did not notice how time was pa.s.sing, and we--Nelson, Forde, Hooper, and myself--fetched up at 2 a.m. to be met by Captain Scott and comforted with cocoa.

Atkinson's hand was dreadful to behold; he had blisters like great puffed-out slugs on the last three fingers of his right hand, while on the forefinger were three more bulbous-looking blisters, one of them an inch in diameter. For days and days the hand had constantly to be bandaged, P. O. Evans doing nurse and doing it exceedingly well.

Considering all things, we were fairly free of frostbite in the Scott expedition, and there is no doubt that Atkinson's accident served as an example to all of us to "ca' canny."

Although we had our proportion of blizzard days I do not think our meteorological record showed any undue frequency of high wind and blizzards; but, as Simpson in his meteorological discussion points out, we suffered far more in this respect than Amundsen, who camped on the Ice Barrier far from the land. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but in the light of after events one is compelled to state that had we stuck to our original plan and made our landing four hundred miles or so to the eastward of Ross Island, we should have escaped, in all probability, the greater part of the bad weather experienced by us. Comparison with Framheim, Amundsen's observation station, shows that we at Cape Evans had ten times as much high wind as the Norwegians experienced. Our wind velocities reached greater speeds than 60 miles an hour, whereas there does not appear to be any record of wind higher than 45 miles an hour at Amundsen's base at the Bay of Whales. Some of our anemometer records were very interesting. In the month of July, when Wilson's party was absent, we recorded 258 hours of blizzards, that is, of southerly winds of more than 25 miles an hour speed. This was the record for the winter months, but while we were depot-laying and waiting for the sea to freeze over at Hut Point, no less than 404 hours of blizzard were recorded in one month--March. Think of it, well over half the month was blizzard, with its consequent discomfort and danger. The blizzard which nearly caused the loss of the Cape Crozier party measured a wind force up to 84 miles an hour; no wonder the canvas roof of the stone hut there was swept away!

Our minimum temperature at the hut meteorological station was 50 degrees below zero in July, 1911, and the maximum temperature during the winter occurred in June when the thermometer stood as high as +19 degrees.

Our ten ponies stood the winter very well, all things being considered.

One nearly died with cramp, but he pulled round in extraordinary fas.h.i.+on after keeping Oates and myself up all night nursing him. In spite of the names we a.s.signed to the animals, largely on account of their being presented to us by certain schools, inst.i.tutions, and individuals, the ponies were called by names conferred on them by the sailors and those who led them out for exercise. The ten animals that now survived were James Pigg, Christopher, Victor, n.o.bby, Jehu, Michael, s.n.a.t.c.her, Bones, Snippets, and a Manchurian animal called Chinaman, who behaved very badly in that he was always squealing, biting, and kicking the other ponies. A visitor to the stables, if he lent a hand to stir up the blubber which was usually cooking there, found himself generally welcome and certain to be entertained. Oates and Meares, his constant companions, had both served through the South African War, and had many delightful stories to tell of their experiences in this campaign; their anecdotes are not all printable, but no matter. Of Oates it is correct to say that he was more popular with the seamen than any other officer. He understood these men perfectly and could get any amount of work out of them, this was a great advantage, because he only had his Russian groom permanently to a.s.sist him, and he generally used volunteer labour after working hours to carry out his operations. In the two lectures he gave us on "The Care and Management of Horses," to which reference has been made, Oates showed how much time and thought he had devoted to his charges, and to the forthcoming pony-sledge work over the Great Ice Barrier.

During the latter half of the winter Oates and I saw a good deal of one another, as we daily exercised our ponies on the sea ice when Wilson's party was away and afterwards also till the weather was light enough for me to continue surveying. Oates led two ponies out generally-- Christopher, the troublesome, and Jehu, the indolent while the care of the rogue pony, Chinaman, devolved on myself. When the ponies went well, which was usually the case, when they did not suffer from the weather, we used to have long yarns about our respective services and mutual friends.

Oates would often discuss the forthcoming southern journey, and his ambition was to reach the top of the Beardmore Glacier; he did not expect to be selected for the southern party, which was planned to contain four men only--two of these must have special knowledge of navigation, to check one another's observations--the third would be a doctor, and it was expected that a seaman would be chosen for the fourth. So Oates was convinced that he had no chance, never for a moment appreciating his own sterling qualities.

By the spring the ponies were all ready to start their serious training for the southern journey, and the proper leaders now took charge to daily exercise their animals in harness. The older sledges were used with dummy loads, varying in weight according to the condition and strength of the pony. So well in fact and so carefully did Oates tend his charges, that by the time they were required for the southern journey only Jehu caused him any anxiety, even so this beast managed to haul a reasonable load for a distance of nearly 280 miles.

As to the dogs, the list was as follows:

Poodle--killed during gale outward in s.h.i.+p.

Mannike Rabchick (Little Grouse)--died from fall into creva.s.se.

Vashka--died suddenly, cause unknown.

Sera Uki (Gray Ears)--died after cramp and paralysis of hind legs.

Seri do. do.

Deek do. do.

Stareek (Old Man)--sent back with first supporting party.

Deek the Wild One.