The Home Of The Blizzard Part 51

"At 6.30 P.M. the gale eased and, during a comparative lull, Moyes came out to feed the dogs. Noticing our position, he helped us to re-erect the tent and Dovers then went out and piled snow over the torn seam.

Moyes said that Harrisson and he had been fairly comfortable, although the cap of their tent was slowly tearing with the pressure of the wind and snow on the weather panels....

"On Friday, the 18th, Swiss, one of the dogs, returned very thin after six days' absence from the camp.

"On the following Monday the blizzard moderated somewhat and we proceeded to make our quarters more roomy by digging out the floor and undercutting the sides, thus lowering the level about eighteen inches.

"Our tent now looks as if it were half blown over. To relieve the tremendous strain on the cap, we lowered the feet of the two lee poles on to the new floor. The tent now offered very little resistance to the wind. We were able to communicate with Harrisson and Moyes and they said they were all right."

When the snow and wind at last held up, they immediately made down to the sea-ice and back towards home, and, when they met us, had done nineteen miles. All were stiff next day, and no wonder; a march of twenty-eight miles after lying low for seventeen days is a very strenuous day's work.

Preparations were made on October 28 for the main eastern summer journey, the object of which was to survey as much coast-line as possible and at the same time to carry on geological work, surveying and magnetics. The party was to consist of Kennedy, Watson and myself.

Jones, Dovers and Hoadley were to start on the main western journey on November 2. I arranged that Harrisson and Moyes should remain at the Hut, the latter to carry on meteorological work, and Harrisson biology and sketching. Later, Harrisson proposed to accompany me as far as the Hippo depot, bringing the dogs and providing a supporting party. At first I did not like the idea, as he would have to travel one hundred miles alone, but he showed me that he could erect a tent by himself and, as summer and better weather were in sight, I agreed that he should come.

Each party was taking fourteen weeks' provisions, and I had an additional four weeks' supply for Harrisson and the dogs. My total load came to nine hundred and seventy pounds; the dogs pulling four hundred pounds with the a.s.sistance of one man and three of us dragging five hundred and seventy pounds.

CHAPTER XXI THE WESTERN BASE--BLOCKED ON THE SHELF-ICE

by F. Wild

We started away on the main eastern journey with a spurt of eleven miles on a calm and cloudless day, intending to follow our former track over the shelf-ice to the Hippo Nunatak. The surface varied; soft patches putting a steady brake on the ardour of the first, fresh hours of marching.

In the afternoon, it was only necessary to wear a s.h.i.+rt, singlet, heavy pyjama trousers, finnesko and socks, and even then one perspired freely.

The temperature stood at 17 degrees F. The dogs pulled their load well, requiring help only over loose snow.

The evening of Friday November 1, 1912, saw us past Ma.s.son Island and about ten miles from the mainland. All day there had been a chill easterly breeze, the temperature being well below zero. The sky was hazy with cirro-stratus and a fine halo "ringed" the sun.

Looking out from the tent in the morning we saw that the clouds were dense and lowering, but the breezes were light and variable until 5 P.M., when an east-north-east wind arose, bringing snow in its train.

Travelling through foggy drift, we could just ascertain that the Bay of Winds had opened up on the right. The day's march was a good one of sixteen miles thirty-five yards.

The Bay of Winds did not belie its name. Throughout November 3 the wind veered about in gusts and after lunch settled down to a hard south-easter.

We had made a good start; more than sixty-two miles in a little over four days. The camp was half-way across the Bay of Winds, with the Alligator Nunatak six miles off on the "starboard bow" and the Rock of the Avalanches seventeen miles straight ahead. Pa.s.sing glimpses were caught of the Hippo twenty-four miles distant.

On November 5, after a day's blizzard, there was much acc.u.mulated snow to shovel away from tents and sledges. Finding the hauling very arduous, we headed in for the land to find a better surface, pa.s.sing the Alligator Nunatak close on its southern side.

At noon on the 6th, the sledges were running parallel to the Rock of the Avalanches, three miles away, and soon afterwards we came to a large boulder; one of four in a line from the rock-cliffs, from which they had been evidently transported, as they were composed of the same gneiss.

The Hippo was close at hand at four o'clock and, on nearing the shattered ice about the depot, we released the dogs and pulled the sledge ourselves. On being freed, they galloped over to the rock and were absent for over an hour. When they returned, Amundsen's head was daubed with egg-yolk, as we thought. This was most probable as scores of snow petrels were flying about the rocks.

A nasty shock was awaiting us at the depot. The sledge, which had been left on end, two feet buried in hard snow and with a mound six feet high built round it, had been blown completely away. The stays, secured to foodbags, were both broken; one food-bag weighing sixty-eight pounds having been lifted ten feet. This was a very serious loss as the total load to be carried now amounted to one thousand one hundred and eighty pounds, which was too great a weight to be supported by one sledge.

It appeared, then, that the only thing to do was to include Harrisson in the party, so that we could have his sledge. This would facilitate our progress considerably, but against that was the fact that Moyes would be left alone at the Base under the belief that Harrisson had perished.

A gale was blowing on the 7th, but as we were partly under the lee of the Hippo, it was only felt in gusts. A visit was made to the Nunatak; Harrisson to examine the birds, Watson for geology and photography, while I climbed to the summit with the field-gla.s.ses to look for the missing sledge. Kennedy remained at the camp to take a series of magnetic observations.

There were hundreds of snow petrels pairing off, but no eggs were seen in any of the nest-crevices. They were so tame that it was quite easy to catch them, but they had a habit of ejecting their partially digested food, a yellow oily mess, straight at one. This was the stuff we had thought was egg-yolk on Amundsen's head the previous night.

Upon returning to camp, the search for the sledge was continued. After prospecting with a spade in possible snow-drifts and creva.s.se-lids, we walked out fanwise, in the direction of the prevailing wind, but with no result. I decided, therefore, to take Harrisson with me. I was extremely sorry for Moyes, but it could not be helped.

On the way back towards the land to the south, we found that the surface had improved in the morning's gale. Camp was finally pitched on a slope close to the high land.

The coast, from the Base to this spot--Delay Point--runs almost due east and west and with no deep indentations except the Bay of Winds. To the west, the slope from the inland plateau is fairly gradual and therefore not badly broken, but still farther west it is much steeper, coming down from two thousand feet in a very short distance, over tumbling ice-fields and frozen cascades. Several outcrops of dark rock lay to the east, one of them only two miles away.

The wind-velocity fluctuated between sixty and eighty miles per hour, keeping us securely penned. Harrisson and Kennedy, after battling their way to our tent for a meal, used the second primus and cooker, brought for Harrisson, in their own tent. All we could do was to smoke and listen to the fierce squalls and las.h.i.+ng drift. I had brought nothing to read on the trip, making up the weight in tobacco. Watson had Palgrave's 'Golden Lyrics', Kennedy, an engineer's hand-book, and Harrisson, a portion of the 'Reign of Mary Tudor'. There was a tiny pack of patience cards, but they were in the instrument-box on the sledge and none of us cared to face the gale to get them.

The wind, on the 10th, saw fit to moderate to half a gale; the drift creeping low and thick over the ground; the land visible above it.

Donning burberrys, we made an excursion to the rocks ahead. Two miles and a climb of six hundred feet were rather exhausting in the strong wind. There were about eighty acres of rock exposed on the edge of the ice-cap, mainly composed of mica schists and some granite; the whole extensively weathered. A line of moraine ran from the rocks away in an east-north-east direction.

Most of the next day was broken by a heavy gale and, since the prospect ahead was nothing but bare, rough ice, we pa.s.sed the day in making everything ready for a start and repaired a torn tent. The rent was made by Amundsen, who dragged up the ice-axe to which he was tethered and, in running round the tent, drove the point of the axe through it, narrowly missing Kennedy's head inside.

Tuesday November 12 was an interesting day. The greater part of the track was over rippled, level ice, thrown into many billows, through devious pressure-hummocks and between the inevitable creva.s.ses. The coast was a kaleidoscope of sable rocks, blue cascades, and fissured ice-falls. Fifteen miles ahead stood an island twenty miles long, rising in bare peaks and dark knolls. This was eventually named David Island.

The dogs were working very well and, if only a little additional food could be procured for them, I knew they could be kept alive. Zip broke loose one night and ate one of my socks which was hanging on the sledge to dry; it probably tasted of seal blubber from the boots. Switzerland, too, was rather a bother, eating his harness whenever he had a chance.

On the 14th, a depot was formed, consisting of one week's provisions and oil; the bags being buried and a mound erected with a flag on top.

Kennedy took a round of angles to determine its position.

At the end of two snowy days, after we had avoided many ugly creva.s.ses, our course in an east-south-east line pointed to a narrow strait between David Island and the mainland. On the southern side of the former, there was a heaped line of pressure-ice, caused by the flow from a narrow bay being stopped by the Island. After lunch, on the 16th, there was an hour's good travelling and then we suddenly pulled into a half-mile of broken surface--the confluence of the slowly moving land-ice and of the more rapidly moving ice from a valley on our right, from which issued Reid Glacier. It was impossible to steer the dogs through it with a load, so we lightened the loads on both sledges and then made several journeys backwards and forwards over the more broken areas, allowing the dogs to run loose. The creva.s.ses ran tortuously in every direction and falls into them were not uncommon. One large lid fell in just as a sledge had cleared it, leaving a hole twelve feet wide, and at least a hundred feet deep. Once over this zone, the sledges were worked along the slope leading to the mainland where we were continually worried by their slipping sideways.

Ahead was a vast sea of crushed ice, tossed and piled in every direction. On the northern horizon rose what we concluded to be a flat-topped, castellated berg. Ten days later, it resolved itself into a tract of heavy pressure ridges.

Camping after nine and a half miles, we were surprised, on moving east in the morning, to sight clearly the point--Cape Gerlache--of a peninsula running inland to the southwest. A glacier from the hinterland, pus.h.i.+ng out from its valley, had broken up the shelf-ice on which we were travelling to such an extent that nothing without wings could cross it. Our object was to map in the coastline as far east as possible, and the problem, now, was whether to go north or south. From our position the former looked the best, the tumbled shelf-ice appearing to smooth out sufficiently, about ten miles away, to afford a pa.s.sage east, while, to the south, we scanned the Denman Glacier, as it was named, rolling in magnificent cascades, twelve miles in breadth, from a height of more than three thousand feet. To get round the head of this ice-stream would mean travelling inland for at least thirty miles.

So north we went, getting back to our old surface over a heavy "cross sea," honeycombed with pits and chasms; many of them with no visible bottom. There was half a mile to safety, but the area had to be crossed five times; the load on the twelve-foot sledge being so much, that half the weight was taken off and the empty sledges brought back for the other half. Last of all came the dogs' sledge. Kennedy remarked during the afternoon that he felt like a fly walking on wire-netting.

The camp was pitched in a line of pressure, with wide creva.s.ses and "h.e.l.l-holes" within a few yards on every side. Altogether the day's march had been a miserable four miles. On several occasions, during the night, while in this disturbed area, sounds of movement were distinctly heard; cracks like rifle shots and others similar to distant heavy guns, accompanied by a weird, moaning noise as of the glacier moving over rocks.

November 18 was a fine, bright day: temperature 8 degrees to 20 degrees F. Until lunch, the course was mainly north for more than five miles.

Then I went with Watson to trace out a road through a difficult area in front. At this point, there broke on us a most rugged and wonderful vision of ice-scenery.

The Denman Glacier moving much more rapidly than the Shackleton Shelf, tore through the latter and, in doing so, shattered both its own sides and also a considerable area of the larger ice-sheet. At the actual point of contact was what might be referred to as gigantic bergschrund: an enormous chasm over one thousand feet wide and from three hundred feet to four hundred feet deep, in the bottom of which creva.s.ses appeared to go down for ever. The sides were splintered and crumpled, glittering in the sunlight with a million sparklets of light. Towering above were t.i.tanic blocks of carven ice. The whole was the wildest, maddest and yet the grandest thing imaginable.

The turmoil continued to the north, so I resolved to reconnoitre westward and see if a pa.s.sage were visible from the crest of David Island.

The excursion was postponed till next day, when Kennedy, Watson and I roped up and commenced to thread a tangled belt of creva.s.ses. The island was three and a half miles from the camp, exposing a bare ridge and a jutting bluff, nine hundred feet high--Watson Bluff. At the Bluff the rock was almost all gneiss, very much worn by the action of ice. The face to the summit was so steep and coa.r.s.ely weathered that we took risks in climbing it. Moss and lichens grew luxuriantly and scores of snow petrels hovered around, but no eggs were seen.

Owing to an overcast sky, the view was not a great deal more enlightening than that which we had had from below. The Denman Glacier swept down for forty miles from over three thousand feet above sea-level. For twenty miles to the east torn ice-ma.s.ses lay distorted in confusion, and beyond that, probably sixty miles distant, were several large stretches of bare rock-like islands.

On November 20, a strong north-east wind blew, with falling snow.

Nothing could be seen but a white blanket, above, below and all around; so, with sudden death lurking in the bottomless creva.s.ses on every hand, we stayed in camp.

A blizzard of great violence blew for two days and the tent occupied by Kennedy and myself threatened to collapse. We stowed all our gear in the sleeping-bags or in a hole from which snow had been dug for cooking.

By the second day we had become extremely tired of lying down. One consolation was that our lips, which were very sore from exposure to the sun and wind, had now a chance of healing.