The Home Of The Blizzard Part 26

When it had reached the edge of the glacier, our path led over a solid ocean rising and faring in billows, two hundred and fifty feet in height; no doubt caused by the glacier in its northward movement being compressed against the southern side of Dixson Island. Still, the "caravan" made considerable progress, ending with a day's journey of sixteen miles.

During the small hours of November 28 the wind rose to a velocity of sixty miles per hour, but gradually diminished to a twenty-knot breeze as the day advanced. Light snow fell from a sky which was densely clouded.

We still pursued a devious track amid rolling waves of ice, encountering beds of soft snow through which the sledges moved slowly. By 6 P.M.

pinnacles and hummocks stood around on every side, and the light was such that one could not distinguish creva.s.ses until he was on top of them. We had to camp and be satisfied with seven miles "to the good." By this time the dogs were in good training and grew noticeably ravenous.

In the evening, before they were properly tethered, Shackleton seized a one-week provision bag, ripped it open and ate a block of b.u.t.ter weighing more than two and a half pounds. This was a loss to us, as b.u.t.ter was regarded as a particular delicacy.

The sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly next day and it was at once evident that we were in a zone of tumbled and disrupted ice.

For many hours a way was won through a mighty turmoil of serac and over innumerable creva.s.ses with varied fortune. Just before lunch my two sledges were nearly lost through the dogs swinging sharply to one side before the second sledge had cleared a rather rotten snow-bridge. I was up with the dogs at the time, and the first intimation I received of an accident was on seeing the dogs and front sledge being dragged backwards; the rear sledge was hanging vertically in a creva.s.se.

Exerting all my strength I held back the front sledge, and in a few moments was joined by Ninnis and Mertz, who soon drove a pick and ice-axe down between the runners and ran out an anchoring rope.

It was a ticklish business recovering the sledge which hung suspended in the creva.s.se. It could not be lifted vertically as its bow was caught in a V-shaped cornice formed by an overhanging ma.s.s of snow. To add to our troubles the ground all about the place was precarious and unsafe.

Mertz and Ninnis therefore lowered me down and I attached a rope to the tail-end of the sledge. The bow-rope and tail-rope were then manipulated alternately until the bow of the sledge was manoeuvred slowly through the gaping hole in the snow-lid and was finally hauled up on to level ground. No more remarkable test of the efficiency of the sledge straps and the compactness of the load could have been made.

After lunch Mertz ascended a high point and was able to trace out a route which conducted us in a few hours to a better surface.

We were now at an elevation of from four hundred to five hundred feet above sea-level, running across a beam-wind on our right which increased during the afternoon. A rising blizzard made it necessary to camp after a day's run of ten and one-third miles.

The wind blew up to seventy miles an hour during the night, but eased in strength early on November 30. At 10 A.M. we tried to make a start, but the dogs refused to face the drift. On the wind becoming gusty in the afternoon, it was once more possible to travel, and we set out.

Dense drift was still to be seen pouring over the highlands to the south-east. Above the glacier ahead whirlies, out-lined in high revolving columns of snow, "stalked about" in their wayward courses.

The sledges ran through a sea of creva.s.sed, blue ice, over ridges and past open chasms. Seven miles brought us to the "foot-hills" on the eastern border of the Ninnis Glacier, where we pitched camp.

The first day of December was still and hot, with brilliant suns.h.i.+ne.

The shade temperature reached 34 degrees F. and the snow became so sticky that it was as much as we and the dogs could do to move the sledges up the slopes. As the evening lengthened and the sun sank lower the surface froze hard and our toil was lightened. At midnight we reached an alt.i.tude of nine hundred feet.

December 2 was another warm, bright day. The surface was atrociously bad; hard, sharp sastrugi, never less than two feet high and in many instances three feet six inches from crest to trough. The dogs were not able to exert a united pull for there were never more than half of them in action at a time.

Once more we were at a comparatively high alt.i.tude and a fine view presented itself to the north. One could look back to the mainland slopes descending on the western side of the Ninnis Glacier. Then the glacier, tumultuous and broken, was seen to extend far out into the frozen sea and, sweeping round to the north-east, the eye ranged over a great expanse of floe-ice dotted with bergs. To the east there was a precipitous coastline of dark rock which for a while we thought of visiting. But then it seemed likely that Madigan's party would reach as far east, so we set our faces once more to the rising plateau in the south-east.

At midnight the sun was peering over the southern sky-line, and we halted at an elevation of one thousand five hundred and fifty feet, having covered eight and a half miles in the day. The temperature was 5 degrees F.

"December 3.--We were not long on the way before the sky became overcast and light snow fell. The surface was becoming flatter. Camp was pitched at 11 P.M. after eleven and two-thirds miles.

"December 4.--Another day of bad light but the surface improved and good headway was made on an easterly course at an elevation of between two thousand and two thousand eight hundred feet. The creva.s.ses were practically past. The day's march was fifteen miles.

"December 5.--A bad day; overcast, snowing and a gale of wind from the east-south-east. However, we plugged on blindly into it until 7.30 P.M.

and then camped, having done eleven and a half miles.

"December 6, 7 and 8.--During these days a dense blizzard raged, the wind reaching seventy miles per hour. There was nothing to do but lie in our bags and think out plans for the future. Each morning Ninnis and Mertz took it in turns to go out and feed their charges, who were snugly buried in the deep snow.

"One day in the sleeping-bag does not come amiss after long marches, but three days on end is enough to bore any one thoroughly.

"Ninnis was not so badly off with a volume of Thackeray, but Mertz had come to the end of a small edition of 'Sherlock Holmes' when blizzard-bound near Aladdin's Cave, and his only diversion on these days was to recite pa.s.sages from memory for our mutual benefit."

I was troubled with an inflammation in the face just at this time, while Ninnis suffered pain owing to a "whitlow" on one of his fingers.

As usual the food ration was reduced. This caused us to have more than ordinarily vivid dreams. I happened to be awake one night when Ninnis was sledging in imagination, vociferously shouting, "Hike, hike," to the dogs; our equivalent of the usual "Mush, mush."

Despite considerable wind and drift we got away at 8 A.M. on December 9. The sky was overcast and there was nothing to be seen except a soft carpet of newly fallen snow into which we sank half-way to the knees.

The sledges ran deeply and heavily so that the dogs had to be a.s.sisted.

Ahead Mertz glided along triumphant, for it was on such occasions that skis were of the greatest a.s.sistance to him.

During the day a snow petrel circled above us for a while and then returned to the north.

The course was due east at an elevation of two thousand three hundred feet and the total distance we threw behind during the day was sixteen and a half miles.

On the 10th light wind and low drift were the order of things. Our spirits rose when the sky cleared and a slight down grade commenced.

During the morning Ninnis drew our attention to what appeared to be small ice-capped islets fringing the coast, but the distance was too great for us to be sure of their exact nature. Out near the verge of the horizon a tract of frozen sea with scattered bergs could be seen.

Next day more features were distinguishable. The coast was seen to run in a north-easterly direction as a long peninsula ending in a sharp cape--Cape Freshfield. The north appeared to be filled with frozen sea though we could not be certain that it was not dense pack-ice. Little did we know that Madigan's party, about a week later, would be marching over the frozen sea towards Cape Freshfield in the north-east.

At 10 P.M. on the 11th, at an alt.i.tude of one thousand eight hundred feet, the highland we were traversing fell away rapidly and sea-ice opened up directly in front of us. The coastal downfalls to the south-east fell in rugged ma.s.ses to a vertical barrier, off the seaward face of which large, tabular bergs were grouped within environing floe.

Throughout December 12 a somewhat irregular course was made to the south-east and south to avoid the broken area ahead. We had had enough of creva.s.ses and wished to be clear of serac-ice in the future.

For some days Ninnis had been enduring the throbbing pain of a whitlow and had not been having sufficient sleep. He always did his share of the work and had undoubtedly borne a great deal of pain without showing it.

On several nights I noticed that he sat up in his sleeping-bag for hours puffing away at a pipe or reading. At last the pain became so acute that he asked me to lance his finger. This was successfully accomplished after breakfast on the 13th and during the day he had much relief.

While Ninnis rested before we made a start, Mertz and I re-arranged the sledges and their loads. A third sledge was no longer necessary, so the one usually driven by Ninnis, which had been damaged, was discarded and all the gear was divided between the other two sledges in nearly equal amounts. When the work was completed, the rear sledge carried an extra weight of fifty pounds. As, however, both food for men and dogs were to come from it, we reckoned that this superadded load would soon diminish.

On we went, during the afternoon, up a steep ascent. Creva.s.ses were so numerous that we took measures to vent them. Some were as much as a hundred feet in width, filled with snow; others were great open holes or like huge cauldrons. Close to the windward edge of some of the latter high ramps of neve with bluff faces on the windward side stood up like monoliths reaching twenty-five feet in maximum height.

In the evening a field of neve was reached and we felt more placid after the anxiety of the preceding hours.

During the pa.s.sage of a snow-filled valley a dull, booming sound like the noise of far-distant cannon was heard. It was evidently connected with the subsidence of large areas of the surface crust. Apparently large cavities had formed beneath the snow and the weight of ourselves and the sledges caused the crust to sink and the air to be expelled.

The sun appeared late in the day and, as it was almost calm, the last few hours of marching were very pleasant. At midnight we camped at an alt.i.tude of one thousand nine hundred feet.

A light east-south-east wind was blowing as the sledges started away eastward on the morning of December 14. The weather was sunny and the temperature registered 21 degrees F.

Mertz and I were happy to know that Ninnis had slept well and was feeling much better.

Our march was interrupted at noon by a lat.i.tude observation, after which Mertz went ahead on skis singing his student songs. The dogs rose to the occasion and pulled eagerly and well. Everything was for once in harmony and the time was at hand when we should turn our faces homewards.

Mertz was well in advance of us when I noticed him hold up his ski-stick and then go on. This was a signal for something unusual so, as I approached the vicinity, I looked out for creva.s.ses or some other explanation of his action. As a matter of fact creva.s.ses were not expected, since we were on a smooth surface of neve well to the southward of the broken coastal slopes. On reaching the spot where Mertz had signalled and seeing no sign of any irregularity, I jumped on to the sledge, got out the book of tables and commenced to figure out the lat.i.tude observation taken on that day. Glancing at the ground a moment after, I noticed the faint indication of a creva.s.se. It was but one of many hundred similar ones we had crossed and had no specially dangerous appearance, but still I turned quickly round, called out a warning word to Ninnis and then dismissed it from my thoughts.

Ninnis, who was walking along by the side of his sledge, close behind my own, heard the warning, for in my backward glance I noticed that he immediately swung the leading dogs so as to cross the creva.s.se squarely instead of diagonally as I had done. I then went on with my work.

There was no sound from behind except a faint, plaintive whine from one of the dogs which I imagined was in reply to a touch from Ninnis's whip.

I remember addressing myself to George, the laziest dog in my own team, saying, "You will be getting a little of that, too, George, if you are not careful."

When I next looked back, it was in response to the anxious gaze of Mertz who had turned round and halted in his tracks. Behind me, nothing met the eye but my own sledge tracks running back in the distance. Where were Ninnis and his sledge?