The Worst Journey in the World Part 47

When this blizzard cleared the camp was buried, and even on un.o.bstructed surfaces the snowdrifts averaged four feet of additional depth. Two enormous drifts ran down to the sea from either end of the hut. I do not think we ever found some of our stores again, but the larger part we carried up to the higher ground behind us where they remained fairly clear. About this time I began to notice large sheets of anchor ice off the end of Cape Evans, that is to say, ice forming and remaining on the bottom of the open sea. Now also the open water was extending round the cape into the South Bay behind us: but it was too dark to get any reliable idea of the distribution of ice in the Sound. We were afraid that we were cut off from Hut Point, but I do not believe that this was the case; though the open water must have stretched many miles to the south in the middle of the Sound. The days when it was clear enough even to potter about outside the hut were exceptional. G.o.d was very angry.

"_Sunday, July 14._ A blizzard during the night, and after breakfast it was drifting a lot. While we were having service some of the men went over the camp to get ice for water. The sea-ice had been blown out of North Bay, and the men supposed that the sea was open, and would look black, but Crean tells me that they nearly walked over the ice-foot, and, when it cleared later, we saw the sea as white as the ice-foot itself. A strip of ice which was lying out in the Bay last night must have been brought in by the tide, even against a wind of some forty miles an hour.

This shows what an influence the tides and currents have in comparison with the winds, for just at this time we are having very big tides. It was blowing and drifting all the morning, and the tide was flowing in, pressing the ice in under the ice-foot to such an extent that later it remained there, though the tide was ebbing and a strong southerly was blowing."[282] Incidentally the bergs which were grounded in our neighbourhood were s.h.i.+fted and broken about considerably by these high winds: also the meteorological screen placed on the Ramp the year before was broken from its upright, which had snapped in the middle, and must have been taken up into the air and so out to sea, for there was no trace of it to be found: Wright lost two doors placed over the entrance to the magnetic cave: when he lifted them they were taken out of his hands by the wind, and disappeared into the air and were never seen again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NORTH BAY AND THE BARNE GLACIER]

So ready was the sea to freeze that there can be little doubt that it already contained large numbers of ice crystals, and time and again I have stood upon the ice-foot watching the tongues of the winds licking up the waters as they roared their way out to sea. Then, with no warning, there would come, suddenly and completely, a lull. And there would be a film of ice, covering the surface of the sea, come so quickly that all you could say was that it was not there before and it was there now. And then down would come the wind again and it was gone. Once when the winter had gone and daylight had returned I stood upon the end of the cape, the air all calm around me, and there, half-a-mile away, a full blizzard was blowing: the islands, and even the berg between Inaccessible Island and the cape, were totally obscured in the thickest drift: the top of the drift, which was very distinct, thinned to show dimly the crest of Inaccessible Island: Turk's Head was visible and Erebus quite clear. In fact I was just on the edge of a thick blizzard, blowing down the Strait, the side showing as a perpendicular wall about 500 feet high and travelling, I should say, about 40 miles an hour. A roar came out from it of the wind and waves.

The weather conditions were extraordinarily local, as another experience will show. Atkinson and Dimitri were off to Hut Point with the dogs, carrying biscuit and pemmican for the coming Search Journey: I went with them some way, and then left them to place a flag upon the end of Glacier Tongue for surveying purposes. It was clear and bright, and it was easy to get a sketch of the bearings of the islands from this position, which showed how great a portion of the Tongue must have broken off in the autumn of 1911. I antic.i.p.ated a pleasant walk home, but was somewhat alarmed when heavy wind and drift came down from the direction of the Hutton Cliffs. Wearing spectacles, and being unable to see without them, I managed to steer with difficulty by the sun which still showed dimly through the drift. It was amazing suddenly to walk out of the wall of drift into light airs at Little Razorback Island. One minute it was blowing and drifting hard and I could see almost nothing, the next it was calm, save for little whirlwinds of snow formed by eddies of air drawn in from the north. In another three hundred yards the wind was blowing from the north. On this day Atkinson found wind force 8 and temperature -17 at Hut Point: at Cape Evans the temperature was zero and men were sitting on the rocks and smoking in the sun. Many instances might be given to show how local our weather conditions often were.

There was a morning some time in the middle of the winter when we awoke to one of our usual tearing blizzards. We had had some days of calm, and the ice had frozen sufficiently for the fish-trap to be lowered again.

But that it would not stand much of this wind was obvious, and after breakfast Atkinson stuck out his jaw and said he wasn't going to lose another trap for any dash blizzard. He and Keohane sallied forth on to the ice, lost to our sight immediately in the darkness and drift. They got it, but arrived on the cape in quite a different place, and we were glad to see them back. Soon afterwards the ice blew out.

Much credit is due to the mule leaders that they were able to exercise their animals without hurt. Cape Evans in the dark, strewn with great boulders, with the open sea at your feet, is no easy place to manage a very high-spirited and excitable mule, just out of a warm stable, especially if this is his first outing for several days and the wind is blowing fresh, and you are not sure if your face is frost-bitten, and you are quite sure that your hands are. But the exercise was carried out without mishap. The mules themselves were most anxious to go out, and when Pyaree developed a housemaid's knee and was kept in, she revenged herself upon her more fortunate companions by biting each one hard as it pa.s.sed her head on its way to and from the door. Gulab was the biggest handful, and Williamson managed him with skill: some of them, especially Lal Khan, were very playful, running round and round their leaders and stopping to paw the ground: Khan Sahib, on the other hand, was bored, yawning continually: it was suggested that he was suffering from polar ennui! Altogether they reflected the greatest credit upon Lashly, who groomed them every day and took the greatest care of them. They were subject to the most violent fits of jealousy, being much disturbed if a rival got undue attention. The dog Vaida, however, was good friends with them all, going down the line and rubbing noses with them in their stalls.

The food of the mules was based upon that given by Oates to the ponies the year before, and the results were successful.

The accommodation given to the dogs in the Terra Nova on the way south is open to criticism. As the reader may remember, they were chained on the top of the deck cargo on the main deck, and of course had a horrible time during the gale, and any subsequent bad weather, which did not however last very long. But it was quite impossible to put them anywhere else, for every square inch between decks was so packed that even our personal belongings for more than two years were reduced to one small uniform case. Any seaman will easily understand that to build houses or shelters on deck over and above what we had already was out of the question. As a matter of fact I doubt whether the dogs had a worse time than we during that gale. In good weather at sea, and at all times in the pack, they were comfortable enough. But future explorers might consider whether they can give their dogs more shelter during the winter than we were able to do. Amundsen, whose Winter Quarters were on the Barrier itself, and who experienced lower temperatures and very much less wind than was our lot at Cape Evans, had his dogs in tents, and let them run loose in the camp during the day. Tents would have gone in the winds we experienced, and I have explained that we had no snow in which we could make houses, as was done by Amundsen in the Barrier.

Our more peaceable dogs were allowed to run loose, especially during this last winter, at the beginning of which we also built a dog hospital. We should have liked to loose them all, but if we did so they immediately flew at one another's throats. We might perhaps have let them loose if we had first taken the precaution Amundsen took, and muzzled all of them before doing so. The sport of fighting, so his dogs discovered, lost all its charm when they found they could not taste blood, and they gave it up, and ran about unmuzzled and happy. But the slaughter among the seals and penguins would have been horrible with us, and many dogs might have been carried away on the breaking sea-ice. The tied-up ones lay under the lee of a line of cases, each in his own hole. They curled up quite snugly buried in the snowdrift when blizzards were blowing, and lay exactly in the same way when sledging on the Barrier, the first duty of the dog-driver after pitching his own tent being to dig holes for each of his dogs. It may be that these conditions are more natural to them than any other, and that they are warmer when covered by the drifted snow than they would be in any unwarmed shelter: but this I doubt. At any rate they throve exceedingly under these rigorous conditions, soon becoming fat and healthy after the hardest sledge journeys, and their sledging record is a very fine one. We could not have built them a hut; as it was, we left our magnetic hut, a far smaller affair, in New Zealand, for there was no room to stow it on the s.h.i.+p. I would not advise housing dogs in a hut built with a lean-to roof as an annexe to the main living-hut, but this would be one way of doing it if you are prepared to stand the noise and smell.

The dog-biscuits, provided by Spratt, weighed 8 oz. each, and their sledging ration was 1 lbs. a day, given to them after they reached the night camp. We made seal pemmican for them and tried this when sledging, as an occasional variation on biscuit, but they did not thrive on this diet. The oil in the biscuits caused purgation, as also did the pemmican: the fat was partly undigested and the excreta were eaten. The ponies also ate their excreta at times. Certain dogs were confirmed leather eaters, and we carried chains for them: on camping, these dogs were taken out of their canvas and raw-hide harnesses, and attached to the sledge by the chains, care being taken that they could not get at the food on the sledge. When sledging, Amundsen gave his dogs pemmican but I do not know what else: he also fed dog to dog: I do not know whether we could have fed dog to dog, for ours were Siberian dogs which, I am told, will not eat one another. At Amundsen's winter quarters he gave them seal's flesh and blubber one day, and dried fish the next.[283] On the long voyage south in the Fram, he fed his dogs on dried fish, and three times a week gave them a porridge of dried fish, tallow, and maize meal boiled together.[284] At Cape Evans or at Hut Point our dogs were given plenty of biscuit some evenings, and plenty of fresh frozen seal at other times.

Our worst trouble with the dogs came from far away--probably from Asia.

There are references in Scott's diary to four dogs as attacked by a mysterious disease during our first year in the South: one of these dogs died within two minutes. We lost many more dogs the last year, and Atkinson has given me the following memorandum upon the parasite, a nematode worm, which was discovered later to be the cause of the trouble:

"_Filaria immitis._--A certain proportion of the dogs became infected with this nematode, and it was the cause of their death, mainly in the second year. It was present at the time the expedition started (1910) all down the Pacific side of Asia and Papua, and there was an examination microscopically of all dogs imported at this time into New Zealand. The secondary host is the mosquito Culex.

"The symptoms varied. The onset was usually with intense pain, during which the animal yelled and groaned: this was cardiac in origin and referable to the presence of the mature form in the beast. There was marked haematuria, and the animals were anaemic from actual loss of haemoglobins. In nearly all cases there was paralysis affecting the hindquarters during the later stages, which tended to spread upwards and finally ended in death.

"The probable place of infection was Vladivostok before the dogs were put on board s.h.i.+p and deported to New Zealand. The only method of coping with the disease is prevention of infection in infected areas. It is probable that the mosquitoes would not bite after the dog's coat had been rubbed with paraffin: or mosquito netting might be placed over the kennels, especially at night time. The larval forms were found microscopically in the blood, and one mature form in the heart."

We were too careful about killing animals. I have explained how Campbell's party was landed at Evans Coves. Some of the party wanted to kill some seals on the off chance of the s.h.i.+p not turning up to relieve them. This was before they were in any way alarmed. But it was decided that life might be taken unnecessarily if they did this--and that winter this party nearly died of starvation. And yet this country has allowed penguins to be killed by the million every year for Commerce and a farthing's worth of blubber.

We never killed unless it was necessary, and what we had to kill was used to the utmost both for food and for the scientific work in hand. The first Emperor penguin we ever saw at Cape Evans was captured after an exciting chase outside the hut in the middle of a blizzard. He kept us busy for days: the zoologist got a museum skin, showing some variation from the usual coloration, a skeleton, and some useful observation on the digestive glands: the parasitologist got a new tape-worm: we all had a change of diet. Many a pheasant has died for less.

There were plenty of Weddell seal round us this winter, but they kept out of the wind and in the water for the most part. The sea is the warm place of the Antarctic, for the temperature never falls below about 29 Fahr., and a seal which has been lying out on the ice in a minus thirty temperature, and perhaps some wind, must feel, as he slips into the sea, much the same sensations as occur to us when we walk out of a cold English winter day into a heated conservatory. On the other hand, a seaman went out into North Bay to bathe from a boat, in the full sun of a mid-summer day, and he was out almost as soon as he was in. One of the most beautiful sights of this winter was to see the seals, outlined in phosph.o.r.escent light, swimming and hunting in the dark water.

We had lectures, but not as many as during the previous winter when they became rather excessive: and we included outside subjects. We read in many a polar book of the depressions and trials of the long polar night; but thanks to gramophones, pianolas, variety of food, and some study of the needs both of mind and body, we suffered very little from the first year's months of darkness. There is quite a store of novelty in living in the dark: most of us I think thoroughly enjoyed it. But a second winter, with some of your best friends dead, and others in great difficulties, perhaps dying, when all is unknown and every one is sledged to a standstill, and blizzards blow all day and all night, is a ghastly experience. This year there was not one of our company who did not welcome the return of the sun with thankfulness: all the more so since he came back to a land of blizzards and made many of our difficulties more easy to tackle. Those who got little outside exercise were more affected by the darkness than others. This last year, of course, the difficulties of getting sufficient outdoor exercise were much increased. Variety is important to the man who travels in polar regions: at all events those who went away on sledging expeditions stood the life more successfully than those whose duties tied them to the neighbourhood of the hut.

Other things being equal, the men with the greatest store of nervous energy came best through this expedition. Having more imagination, they have a worse time than their more phlegmatic companions; but they get things done. And when the worst came to the worst, their strength of mind triumphed over their weakness of body. If you want a good polar traveller get a man without too much muscle, with good physical tone, and let his mind be on wires--of steel. And if you can't get both, sacrifice physique and bank on will.

NOTE

A lecture given at this time by Wright on Barrier Surfaces is especially interesting with relation to the Winter Journey and the tragedy of the Polar Party. The general tend of friction set up by a sledge-runner upon snow of ordinary temperature may be called true _sliding_ friction: it is probable that the runners melt to an infinitesimal degree the millions of crystal points over which they glide: the sledge is running upon water.

Crystals in such temperatures are larger and softer than those encountered in low temperatures. It is now that halos may be seen in the snow, almost reaching to your feet as you pull, and moving forward with you: we steered sometimes by keeping these halos at a certain angle to us. My experience is that the best pulling surface is at an air temperature of about +17 Fahr.: Wright's experience is that below +5 during summer temperatures on the Barrier the surface is fairly good, that between +5 and +15 less good, and between +15 and +25 best. The worst is from +25 upwards, the worst of all being round about freezing point.

As the temperature became high the amount of ice melted by this sliding friction was excessive. It was then that we found ice forming upon the runners, often in almost microscopic amounts, but nevertheless causing the sledges to drag seriously. Thus on the Beardmore we took enormous care to keep our runners free from ice, by sc.r.a.ping them at every halt with the back of our knives. This ice is perhaps formed when the runners sink into the snow to an unusual depth, at which the temperature of the snow is sufficiently low to freeze the water previously formed by friction or radiation from the sun on to a dark runner.

In very low temperatures the snow crystals become very small and very hard, so hard that they will scratch the runners. The friction set up by runners in such temperatures may be known as _rolling_ friction, and the effect, as experienced by us during the Winter Journey and elsewhere, is much like pulling a sledge over sand. This rolling friction is that of snow crystal against snow crystal.

If the barometer is rising you get flat crystals on the ice, if it is falling you get mirage and a blizzard. When you get mirage the air is actually coming out of the Barrier. Thus far Wright's lecture.

Since we returned I have had a talk with Nansen about the sledge-runners which he recommends to the future explorer. The ideal sledge-runner combines lightness and strength. He tells me that he would always have metal runners in high temperatures in which they will run better than wood. In cold temperatures wood is necessary. Metal is stronger than wood with same weight. He has never used, but he suggests the possible use of, aluminium or magnesium for the metal. And he would also have wooden runners with metal runners attached, to be used alternately, if needed.

The Discovery Expedition used German silver, and it failed: Nansen suggests that the failure was due to the fact that these runners were fitted at home. The effect of this is that the wood shrinks and the German silver is not quite flat: the fitting should be done on the spot.

Nansen did this himself on the Fram, and the result was excellent. [I believe that these Discovery runners were not a continuous strip of metal but were built up in strips, which tore at the points of junction.]

Before it is fitted, German silver should be heated red hot and allowed to cool. This makes it more ductile, like lead, and therefore less springy: the metal should be as thin as possible.

As runners melt the crystals and so run on water, metal is unsuitable for cold snow. For low temperatures, therefore, Nansen would have wooden runners under the metal, the metal being taken off when cold conditions obtained. He would choose such wood as is the best conductor of heat. He tried birch wood in the first crossing of Greenland, but would not recommend it as being too easily broken. In the use of oak, ash, maple, and doubtless also hickory, for runners, the rings of growth of the tree should be as far apart as possible: that is to say, they should be fast growing. Ash with narrow rings breaks. There is ash and ash: American ash is no good for this purpose; some Norwegian ash is useful, and some not.

Our own sledges with ash runners varied enormously. The runners of a sledge should curve slightly, the centre being nearest to the snow. The runners of ski should curve also slightly, in this case upwards in the centre, i.e. from the snow. This is done by the way the wood is cut.

Wood always dries with the curve from the heart towards the outside of the tree.

During our last year we had six new Norwegian sledges twelve feet long, brought down by the s.h.i.+p, with tapered runners of hickory which were 3 inches broad in the fore part and 2 inches only at the stern. I believe that this was an idea of Scott, who considered that the broad runner in front would press down a path for the tapered part which followed, the total area of friction being much less. We took one of them into South Bay one morning and tried it against an ordinary sledge, putting 490 lbs.

on each of them. The surface included fairly soft as well as harder and more rubbly going. There was no difference of opinion that the sledge with the tapered runners pulled easier, and later we used these sledges on the Barrier with great success.

If some instrument could be devised to test sledges in this way it would be of very great service. No team of men can make an exact estimate of the run of their own sledge, let alone the sledge which your pony or your dogs are pulling. Yet sledges vary enormously, and it would be an excellent thing for a leader to be able to test his sledges before buying them, and also to be able to pick out the best for his more important sledge journeys. I believe it can be done by attaching some kind of balance between the sledge and the men pulling it.

Other points mentioned by Nansen are as follows:

Tarred ski are good: the snow does not stick so much. [This probably refers to the Norwegian compound known as Fahrt.] But he does not recommend tarred runners for sledges. Having had experience of a tent of Chinese silk which would go into his pocket but was very cold, he recommends a double tent, the inner lining being detached so that ice could be shaken from both coverings. He suggests the possibility of a woollen lining being warmer than cotton or silk or linen. I am, however, of opinion that wool would collect more moisture from the cooker, and it certainly would be far more difficult to shake off the ice. For four men he would have two two-men sleeping-bags and a central pole coming down between them, and the floor-cloth made in one piece with the tent. For three men a three-man sleeping-bag: e.g. for such a journey as our Winter Journey. He would not brush rime, formed upon the tent by the steam from the cooker and breath, from the inside of tent before striking camp. The more of it the warmer. He considers that two- or three-men sleeping-bags are infinitely warmer than single bags: objections of discomfort are overcome, for you are so tired you go to sleep anyway. I would, however, recommend the explorer to read Scott's remarks upon the same subject before making up his mind.[285]

FOOTNOTES:

[280] My own diary.

[281] My own diary.

[282] My own diary.

[283] See Amundsen, _The South Pole_, vol. i. p. 264.

[284] Ibid. vol. i. p. 119.

[285] Scott, _Voyage of the Discovery_, vol. i. pp. 480-487.

CHAPTER XV

ANOTHER SPRING

O to dream, O to awake and wander There, and with delight to take and render, Through the trance of silence, Quiet breath; Lo! for there among the flowers and gra.s.ses, Only the mightier movement sounds and pa.s.ses; Only winds and rivers, Life and death.

The flowers were of snow, the rivers of ice, and if Stevenson had been to the Antarctic he would have made them so.