A Polar Affair

by Lloyd Spencer Davis

  In his book, Antarctic Penguins, he says that these “hooligans” kill chicks, but as directed by Sidney Harmer, he leaves out all references to their wayward sexual behavior, saying only of the “hooligan cocks”:

  The crimes which they commit are such as to find no place in this book, but it is interesting indeed to note that, when nature intends them to find employment, these birds, like men, degenerate into idleness.

  I am sure that Levick really did witness rape, buggery, pedophilia, necrophilia, and all. But by focusing his attention on their bad behavior, he missed the good that these unemployed birds do from the chicks’ perspective. By their mere presence, they keep the voracious skuas at bay.

  The bawdy behavior of these “hooligans,” as observed by Levick, is likely to be a symptom of the same thing I observed during the real courtship period: males are not very discriminating and will basically bonk anything that moves, and many things that don’t move, as well. During the Reoccupation Period, there really are no negative consequences for these adult males if they mate with the wrong thing. Although, if it is really all about practice, there may be a point to trying to mount an actual female.

  For male Adelie penguins, jumping onto a prone female’s back while vibrating his bill against hers to stimulate her, then padding backward down her back until he reaches the nether region before lowering his tail to bring his cloaca in contact with her cloaca as he shoots his bolt, is not the easiest of tasks. When Fiona and I observed hundreds of penguin copulations as part of our study of the Sperm Wars, we found that about one-third of the males fell off the female before they reached the business end, one-third fired their sperm waywardly like out of control Gatling guns, and only one-third managed to get their sperm on the target or close enough to it for the female’s pulsating pink cloaca to suck the sperm into her reproductive tract.

  But in the Antarctic, it turns out, there are many ways to get screwed, and the easiest, by far, is by the weather.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WEATHER

  It is January 28, 1912. The Polar Plateau. In addition to Evans not being in good condition, Oates’s feet are frostbitten and now are really troubling him. Wilson, the doctor, records that Oates’s “big toe is turning blue-black.” To make matters worse, Wilson himself has snow blindness. The goggles the men have taken are inadequate round little things that cover each eye and fog up easily, encouraging the men to take them off. Amundsen, on the other hand, used an Inuit design modified by his great mentor, Frederick Cook, which were large and covered both eyes like a modern ski goggle, with slits for ventilation so they did not fog up.

  Nevertheless, Scott and his men push on; they have no choice. “The weather is always uncomfortably cold and windy,” according to Wilson. Yet by the time they reach the Upper Glacier Depot on the Beardmore Glacier on the evening of February 7, the place where the first supporting sledge containing Atkinson and Cherry-Garrard had left them on the outward journey, the temperatures are warmer and the wind has abated. Incredibly, despite Scott noting that Evans “is going steadily downhill,” the next day he allows Wilson to take rock samples from Buckley Island and Mount Darwin (really, both are just the tips of great mountains that poke through the top of the Beardmore Glacier), adding thirty-five pounds to the weight of the sledge they are pulling. And this on a day when Evans is unable to pull at all and has to be detached from the sledge.

  Six days later they are still making their way down the glacier. They are getting hungry once again, they are on reduced rations and their progress is slower than it needs to be. “We cannot do distance without the ponies,” Scott tells his men. Yet still they haul the rocks.

  It is February 11, 1912. On this day, Levick makes a pleasant discovery.

  While sledging, he has been reflecting upon his time in Antarctica, in part because of the tedious nature of sledging. “Sledge journeys in themselves are terribly monotonous when there is little change of scene,” he writes in his diary, “In fact, when there is no collecting or other scientific work to occupy ones (sic) mind, and one is pulling hour after hour with nothing but glaring white ahead, darkened by snow goggles, it is simply a form of mental starvation.” It is while dragging his sledge through crevasse fields in an effort to catch up with Campbell that Levick really starts to appreciate how Antarctica has changed him.

  I have come to regard my life rather in the light of a very serious play in two acts. The first act was over, and the curtain rung down on it when I left civilisation to enter this blank antarctic. Now comes the interval during which I am given ample time to reflect upon the scenes of the first act—: to perceive its weak spots, and the way in which I as the chief character must avoid making such mistakes in the second.

  While this area in Terra Nova Bay is at last satisfying the Northern Party’s mission to undertake new exploration, one consequence of their leaving Cape Adare is that Levick had to bring a sudden halt to his study of the penguins. He is pleasantly surprised this day, therefore, when he and Abbott come across “a beautiful little cove with a pebble beach running down to the sea, and a small Adelie Penguin Rookery.” It is, he notes, “somewhat smaller than Cape Royds, and most of the adults seem to have gone, though a good few remain to feed a few crèches of youngsters. A considerable number of adults are still in full moult, and a few have finished moulting.” He goes on to observe:

  The majority of the youngsters look pretty thin, & although some were wildly pursuing old birds and clamouring for food in a very plaintive piping voice, I only once saw one get fed, and I am inclined to think that they are now mostly abandoned by their parents and are reaching the stage in which hunger is driving them one by one into the water in response to the newly found instinct to catch their own food there.

  Perhaps, Levick and the others of the Northern Party should have taken note of the “totally de-downed and nearly de-downed” chicks at the water’s edge: they are telling him that it is time to get out of there before the fury of the winter arrives.

  As if on cue, the next day it starts snowing and blowing.

  February 17, 1912. “A very terrible day,” as Scott observes. Evans is unable to keep up, but Scott is forced to push on to get to the Lower Barrier Depot, the place where the dog teams had turned around on the outward journey.

  . . . the remainder of us were forced to pull very hard, sweating heavily.

  And still they hauled those bloody rocks.

  They stop for lunch, setting up the tent. After they have made and consumed their lunch, Evans still has not appeared and they see him far off in the distance. They ski over to him. He is “on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes.” He cannot walk, so Scott, Wilson, and Bowers return to get the sledge, leaving Oates to comfort Evans.

  By the time they get him into the tent he is in a coma. He never regains consciousness and dies at 12:30 A.M. In many ways, it is a relief for Scott:

  It is a terrible thing to lose a companion in this way, but calm reflection shows that there could not have been a better ending to the terrible anxieties of the past week . . . what a desperate pass we were in with a sick man on our hands at such a distance from home.

  Within half an hour of Evans’s death, they pack up and leave, making it first to the Lower Glacier Camp and then, after a few hours’ sleep, they push onto Shambles Camp, where they can have their fill of the plentiful pony meat.

  However, progress is slow as they go on, skiing and pulling the sledge in deep snow. Scott is worried about the impending change in the weather. “Pray God,” he writes in his diary, “we get better travelling as we are not as fit as we were, and the season is advancing apace.”

  It is Sunday, February 18, 1912. The Northern Party men wait expectantly for the ship to return, but there is no sign of it. Campbell’s diary entries have become a litany of ways to report on the blowing wind:

  February 17th: Still blowing hard with drift

  February 18th: blowing
so hard the tent poles were bent nearly double

  February 19th: blowing as hard as ever again

  February 20th, 21st and 22nd: Blowing a heavy gale, some of the squalls being terrific.

  The blizzard lasts for eight days and by February 23, they are starting to face the cruel reality that lies ahead for them. Even at this time of year, when the full force of the winter is still to be felt, they are very cold, and Levick’s nose gets “rather badly frostbitten.” Levick sums up their dire situation:

  We are now a little anxious about the ship, which was due on the 18th. If she doesn’t come in to relieve us, we shall be a bit hard put to it for the winter, as we have nothing but a few extra sledging provisions with us, and no materials for building a hut, and no fuel, and very few matches.

  We are discussing various ways and means, and think we shall try and find a drift to burrow into, and kill enough seals for fuel (blubber) & food, to last us till midwinter, when we can sledge along the sea ice to Cape Evans, 200 miles to the South’ard.

  On the morning of the same day, February 23, 1912, the Terra Nova has become stuck in newly formed pancake ice as it tries to get to the men in Evans Coves, and is unable to go forward or backward.

  Earlier, on February 18 and right on schedule, the Terra Nova had tried to get to Terra Nova Bay to pick up the Northern Party, but their way had been blocked by dense pack ice. Then came the blizzard, the same one that had been bashing Campbell and the others as they lay confined to their sleeping bags in tents that were at any moment at risk of being torn to smithereens. The ship was driven north and only when the wind eased was it able to head back toward the Drygalski Ice Tongue.

  Now there is a new danger: winter really is coming and the sea is starting to freeze over. With shades of the Belgica and the dreadful prospect of spending the winter on board a ship locked in ice, the crew manages to get the ship moving south, though it is not until the evening of the next day that they manage to fully extricate themselves from the ensnaring pack ice. By then, all thoughts of getting to Campbell and his men have been put aside: they beat a hasty retreat to Cape Evans.

  It is February 24, 1912, and Scott writes perceptively, “It is a race between the season and hard conditions and our fitness and good food.” Two days earlier, after wind-driven snow drift had caused them to miss a cairn and pass one of their old pony camps without seeing it, Scott had ruminated on the ill fortune that the change in weather posed for his own party:

  There is little doubt we are in for a rotten critical time going home, and the lateness of the season may make it really serious.

  The trouble for the four men left is that the surface is poor and the blizzards of season’s end are plainly coming “apace.” While the temperatures during the day are bearable, at night when the barrier is in shadow, it is really cold and all the men now have cold feet. Just as plainly, the men’s fitness is disappearing as fast as their food supplies and, just as importantly, the fuel they need for cooking and melting ice for water. Each day, the equation changes, with the odds shifting in favor of “the season and hard conditions.” Each night, the colder it seems to get: -37°F on February 27, then -40°F the next night, and -41.5°F on March 1.

  That day they make it to the Middle Barrier Depot but discover there is a shortage of fuel. They have scarcely enough, Scott realizes, even with the “most rigid economy,” to get them to their next depot, the Mount Hooper Depot, which is seventy-one miles away. That is, if the weather conditions remain favorable, which they soon show themselves to be anything but: the temperature again falls below -40°F during the night and the wind in the morning blows strong. However, that is not the worst of it. Oates reveals to the other men the condition of his feet, which so far, he has largely suffered in silence: they have become severely frostbitten in the cold temperatures.

  It is February 29, 1912. The Polar Party is not the only one bearing the brunt of the worst of the weather that the Antarctic can pitch at them. Blizzards have kept them “practically confined to our bags for 13 days—a record I believe for any antarctic party, and it has been absolutely miserable,” writes Levick. It eases that day, only for them, cruelly, to spy what they think is “smoke on the horizon and under it a small black speck.” Instead of their ship, it turns out to be “only an iceberg with a cloud behind it.”

  The next day, Campbell orders that they start killing seals and penguins with the prospect of a long, dark, cold winter ahead; they have very little rations left. They kill two Weddell seals and eighteen penguins that day. It is a start but neither species are numerous. The wind needs to relent otherwise the Weddell seals will not come ashore—and, for their sakes, it needs to do so very soon.

  Campbell, meanwhile, asserting his leadership, countermands all other suggestions for possible shelters and decides that they should make a snow cave by burrowing into a snow drift. He finds a suitable drift on the lee side of a small hill about one-and-a-half miles away on an island that forms the western edge of Evans Coves. They shall come to call it Inexpressible Island on account of its dreadful conditions: relentless high winds and large, rounded granite boulders that make walking over them tricky even without the snow, ice, wind, cold, and darkness. As Levick remarks:

  . . . the road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but to us it seemed probable that hell itself would be paved something after the style of Inexpressible Island.

  I am there on the Shokalskiy, trying to get to Evans Coves more than a century after the Terra Nova is doing the same. The benign weather we experienced on arrival at Terra Nova Bay had quickly, as if with a magician’s wave of his wand, turned to blighted weather. The wind—perhaps the very same one recorded by Campbell—is now “blowing a heavy gale” with “some of the squalls being terrific,” even terrifying. Over one hundred miles per hour of terrifying. We stand off Inexpressible Island for a whole day, but that wind is relentless. There is no way we can land.

  It is February 29, 1912. The Terra Nova is once more heading north to try to get to the men stuck at Evan Coves. The ship has been to the Cape Evans Hut to pick up personnel going back to New Zealand, including the dog driver Meares, who had become so upset with Scott’s leadership that he had requested he go home early. The Terra Nova had also put in to Hut Point where it had picked up Teddy Evans, who has scurvy and is close to death.

  The problem facing Pennell is the lateness of the season. The pack ice is closing in all around the ship. The next day the Terra Nova tries once more to get to Evans Coves to pick up the Northern Party, but becomes repeatedly stuck in the pack ice. “Campbell’s chances of relief are getting woefully small,” writes Wilfred Bruce on March 2. That day they manage to make some headway toward the Drygalski Ice Tongue, but again the pack ice eventually blocks their way and shuts down any prospects of getting to the Northern Party. The ship beats a retreat back to Cape Evans.

  The Terra Nova must get back to New Zealand before its way is completely blocked. Late on March 4, 1912, it steams northward with the forlorn hope of trying one last time to get to the Northern Party. On March 6, they are within eighteen miles of the Drygalski Ice Tongue, but they can get no further: their way is blocked by pack ice, which they only manage to get out of “with much difficulty.” They have tried this time “only to make quite certain that we can do nothing, we really know it is futile,” writes Bruce.

  They give up and Campbell, Levick, Priestley, Abbott, Browning, and Dickason are left at Evan Coves to do what no humans have ever done before: to spend a winter in Antarctica without shelter, food, fuel, or even much clothing. Inexpressible, indeed!

  It is March 7, 1912. A sunny day. “Our faces shone in rivalry with the sun,” Roald Amundsen, first man to the South Pole, will say after the Fram has arrived in Hobart. The banks of Storm Bay are scorched brown from a prolonged drought, but Amundsen’s news proves even hotter.

  He cables his brother Leon, King Haakon VII, and Nansen. He has been to the South Pole. He has got there first.

 
Amundsen’s message arrives just as Nansen is writing a letter to, of all people, Kathleen Scott. Nansen has never particularly liked Scott, but from their first meeting, he has been attracted to Kathleen, and she, him.

  While Robert Falcon Scott has been struggling through the snow—face, fingers, and feet bitten by the ferocious cold—in a race with Roald Amundsen to get to the South Pole, improbably, his wife Kathleen has been enjoying the warm embrace of none other than Amundsen’s mentor, Fridtjof Nansen, the tall blond Norwegian hero. In one of those bizarre moments that should make the most shocking of Levick’s observations about the sexual behavior of penguins seem chaste by comparison, as Scott is lying in a reindeer sleeping bag, with the sides of his tent snapping loudly in gale force winds and the gnawing pain of too little food coming from his belly, Kathleen is within the warm clean sheets of a hotel bed in Berlin making love to Nansen.

  Nansen is writing to Kathleen about their next proposed tryst, this one in Paris. After getting the message from Amundsen, he continues:

  I think of you and what you may wish, more than of him, and am in a strange mood, unhappy and uneasy. Oh why are there so many difficulties in the world and why is life so complicated?

  Nansen even goes on to say to her, “I wish that Scott had come first.” However, it is not enough for Kathleen, who can stomach neither Amundsen’s success nor her husband’s failure. Whether out of guilt or grief, her affair with Nansen is over.