‘They will with lighter loads,’ I said.
‘They’re hardly carrying anything as it is,’ he persisted. ‘It would be far better to increase the loads and push them on until they drop. Then next year they can be fed to the dogs. That way at least their suffering will have been of some damn use.’ He addressed Bill, by the way, not me – he knows Bill can’t stand confrontation.
‘I’ve had enough of this cruelty,’ I told him. ‘Personally, it makes me sick.’
‘Then I’m afraid you’ll regret it, sir,’ he drawled, regarding me in that ironical way of his.
‘Regret it or not,’ I retorted, ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ and there and then I informed Evans and the others they would be returning the following night.
At the end of the march the atmosphere in the tent was somewhat strained, and not improved by Cherry-Garrard putting his foot in it with some rambling tale concerning a pony he’d owned as a boy. It had something to do with how he’d gone for a ride wearing his best clothes and how the animal had stalled at a fence, pitching him headlong into a cattle trough. Normally the anecdote would have been received with the suppressed yawns it deserved, but of course on this occasion it gave Titus the opportunity to remind us of the differences between family ‘pets’ and ‘working’ animals.
The word ‘working’ was emphasised in such a sarcastic tone that I nearly got into a spat with him for a second time, and would have done if Bill hadn’t butted in with the comment that there was no such thing as purely reproductive recollection. The ensuing argument had a soothing, yet curiously exhilarating effect and centered much round the dead having more reality for men than the living.
Bill held that the reputations of the remembered dead, from the insignificant mannikin to the most illustrious subject, underwent a change from the very moment of departure. Temporal existence ended, the imaginative faculty of posterity took over. The man who had died in battle, or in the pursuance of some purely personal goal, instantly became the brave hero who had perished for the glory of his country.
At this point Bowers came in from outside, having been attending to all those things none of us realised needed doing. He really is a most exceptional fellow while we wear thick Balaclavas and wind hoods, all he had on his head was that misshapen hat. He’d overheard Bill’s last remark and vigorously agreed with him, maintaining that the living, out of a natural fear of death, needed to attach lofty motives to earthbound reactions, and that an act of so-called courage was merely a spontaneous response, dictated by upbringing, to a sticky situation.
I must say I surprised myself by calling them both cynics. ‘Bravery is a conscious act of discipline,’ I asserted. ‘And as far as I’m concerned there are worse things than dying. Cowardice for one.’
Bill misunderstood me and proposed that many men welcomed death, at which Titus and I cried out with one voice that he was talking morbid rot. After that he and I were civil to each other.
I did consider telling him I regretted we’d had words earlier, that I understood his opposition to the return of the ponies was conducted in good faith, even that future events might well prove him to be right, but I didn’t. Justifying my actions would have been simply no good for morale. Like it or not, and God knows, half the time I don’t, someone has to take the decisions – along with the consequences.
That night’s march was begun in moonshine, though it soon clouded over. I didn’t like the threatening aspect of the sky. The going, as usual, was wretchedly soft; even the dogs seemed to be labouring. For some unknown reason Osman had been disposed, in a not entirely bloodless coup, and Rabchick appeared to have taken over as leader.
These surfaces have taught Meares a valuable lesson, namely that he must rely on his own two feet. Until we began the depot laying I fear he had but a hazy notion of what conditions would be like and rather imagined he would ride the sledges in the Siberian fashion.
After dragging ourselves no more than four miles, by which time the wind had veered ominously from south to north and the temperature dropped to minus sixteen, Teddy Evans said his pony could go no further, and we made camp.
The blizzard hit us just before dawn, and for the next fifty-two hours we were laid up in the tents. It wasn’t so bad for us, for once into our sleeping bags it was easy to ignore the hell blowing outside. When one realises there is absolutely nothing one can do about it, it’s astonishing the number of hours one can doze through. The dogs too were perfectly comfortable; they merely dug themselves into holes and lay on top of one another. It was the ponies who again suffered the most, though Oates and Birdie were in and out night and day attending to them.
As soon as the blizzard had blown itself out we said goodbye to Evans and his party and struck off south, the sun circling low on the horizon. We struggled under puffy pink clouds sailing in a sky of deepest grey. The drift froze on the sledge runners and we were constantly stopping to scrape them free. After only an hour or so of this drudgery Gran, who was leading Weary Willie, dropped behind, so far back that the dog teams caught up. Suddenly Oates and I, who were ahead, heard the most tremendous commotion barking, whinnying, men shouting.
We hurried back and met Meares who said the dogs had attacked Weary Willie. He’d fallen down and they were on him in an instant, sinking their teeth into shoulder and throat, raking his belly with their claws as if to disembowel him. Gran had broken his ski stick and Meares his dog whip in beating them off.
When I got to the scene Weary Willie was on his feet again, legs splayed out, head hanging low, the dogs still snarling horribly, eyes watchful for an advantage, their silvery breath making circles in the frosty air. Willie had given as good as he got, and two of his attackers were bleeding badly. The whole episode was sickening and confirmed my opinion of the unreliability of the dogs. When we moved off we left a trail of blood dripping scarlet blotches on the snow.
After lunch, Wilson, Bowers and I went and fetched Wearie Willie’s load. It was far heavier than that of the other ponies, and obviously this was the cause of Willie falling down in the first place. I was fuming at such carelessness. I blamed Gran, Oates, Meares – especially Meares. ‘He’s all very well in his way,’ I accused, ‘but he’s far too slack in his attitude.’
‘If you say so,’ said Bill.
‘It was apparent to me from the moment I joined the ship at the Cape. Do you remember him coming up on deck in pyjamas? And his surprise when I bawled him out for it?’
‘Yes,’ Bill said. ‘I do remember.’
‘I can’t stand his disgusting habit of shaving the soles of his feet in the tent.’
‘Yes,’ said Bill. ‘It is pretty hard to take.’
I raged on in this manner almost all the way back. Bill bore the brunt of it – Bowers had distanced himself by trudging ahead – nodding, murmuring agreement, occasionally tut-tutting in sympathy, until, the tents coming into sight, he cut me short. ‘I imagine,’ he said, ‘you’ve covered everything pretty thoroughly. I don’t feel it will do the slightest good to repeat any of it to the others. What’s done is done.’ I took his advice, but my God, it gave me a stomach ache.
Two days later we built our last depot at One Ton camp. In the space of twenty-two days, twelve of us, with twenty-six dogs and eight ponies, had managed to cross the 79th Parallel and deposit a ton of stores 150 miles distance from Cape Evans. I would have liked to have pressed on further, but the ponies were done in, the dogs beginning to slow down, and so were we, some of us more than others. Meares had become incapacitated with an ingrowing toe-nail, and Oates’s nose showed signs of frostbite.
We planted a black flag firmly on the top of One Ton depot, packed the sides of the cairn with biscuit boxes, so that the tin should reflect the sun, and turned back.
Twenty-four hours later we were laid up in another blizzard, only this time we were prepared for it and the ponies were better protected. All the same, I was desperately worried about the sick animals sent back with Evans, and as soon as the weather impr
oved, Bill, Cherry-Garrard, Meares and myself dashed for home with a dog team, leaving the others to follow with the ‘crocks’.
I won’t dwell on what happened on the way – sufficient to say the dogs fell into a crevasse and we nearly lost the lot. They were twisting on their traces for an hour or more, and some undoubtedly suffered internal injuries. Even while they dangled, howling in agony, they still continued to bite and tear at one another. Such uncivilised behaviour went some way towards dulling compassion for their plight.
On reaching Safety Camp I was relieved to see Evans and the others safe and sound. Alas, two of the three ponies had died on the way, Jimmy Pig being the sole survivor. The thing was, there was no sign of either Crean or Atkinson, not even a note. After a hot meal, Meares and I went to Hut Point in the hopes of finding them there.
A mystery awaited us; although the old Discovery Hut was now clear of ice and had evidently been lived in – there were socks hanging rigid on the line above the stove – it was deserted. A pencilled note on the door said there was a bag inside containing mail, but there wasn’t. I concluded Atkinson had returned to Safety Camp and we’d somehow passed each other on the way.
Back we went, and I almost wished we’d perished in the attempt, for Atkinson and his woeful bag were indeed there, and the news, conveyed in a letter penned by Campbell, was worse than anything I could have imagined. Amundsen’s intentions, hinted at in that fateful telegram I received in Melbourne, were now out in the open. Campbell had sailed into the Bay of Whales to find that the Norwegians had got there before him.
It was a shattering blow to my hopes; indeed we were all fearfully affected. I turned in early and lay miserably in my sleeping bag. Usually the camp noises continue into the small hours; people calling out to one another; the clatter of cooking utensils; voices raised in good-humoured argument – so much so that often I’ve had to give the order for silence. But that night the men spoke in whispers and even the dogs ceased to bark.
At midnight Bill brought a mug of cocoa to my tent. ‘I thought you could do with this,’ he said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be asleep. None of us are.’
I told him I thought Amundsen’s behaviour was absolutely appalling. ‘His duplicity, his lack of sportsmanship leaves me shuddering with disgust. All the while he was telling the world he was going north he was in fact proceeding south, although he knew perfectly well through newspaper reports what my own plans were.’
‘Drink it while it’s hot, Con,’ Bill urged. ‘It will help you sleep.’
‘You realise he’s a whole degree further south than we are,’ I shouted. ‘And he’s got over a hundred dogs. It’s quite obvious he intends to make a dash for the Pole.’
‘Yes,’ Bill said. ‘It certainly looks like it.’
‘Goddammit, Bill, he’s not interested in science. He just wants to make a race of it.’ I was so incensed I actually ground my teeth.
‘Now look here,’ Bill argued, ‘we’ve got the ponies and we’ve got the motor transport.’
‘Yes,’ I retorted, ‘and owing to carelessness in unloading, the best damn motor we had is at this moment lying at the bottom of McMurdo Sound.’
‘That’s unfair,’ Bill protested. ‘It was on your orders that Campbell had it shifted.’
‘Even Lashly’s lost faith in them. When they did manage to coax the blessed things to start they broke down five minutes later. As for the ponies …’
‘There was more than one person who spoke out against the folly of squandering hundreds of pounds on machines,’ Bill said. ‘Nansen among them.’ And now he, too, was shouting. ‘May I remind you that when you asked his advice, he said dogs, dogs, and dogs again.’ After this outburst he stalked off.
The heat went out of me. Sweet Bill is so rarely stung into apportioning blame where it’s due that I hadn’t a leg to stand on. I plucked the reindeer hairs from my mouth and gulped down the cocoa. I trusted he’d come back. When he did, half an hour later, he squatted down on his haunches and said earnestly, ‘I apologise for losing my temper, but I really can’t stand what amounts to whining … not from you, of all people.’
‘My dear fellow,’ I said, and I did feel contrite. ‘You were absolutely right to speak as you did. It’s just that we’ve had such damnable bad luck … lack of money … not being able to land where we wanted, the failure of the ponies, the ice breaking up, those blasted motors.’
‘None of it is important,’ he said. ‘None of that matters.’
‘The whole expedition is terribly unwieldy for one man to run. Perhaps we were too ambitious … perhaps I should have brought more dogs and less ponies.’
‘Now look here,’ Bill said, ‘forget the dogs, forget the ponies, the weather, the inadequate funding, and all the rest of it. Concentrate on what counts. First and foremost, remember this was always meant to be a scientific expedition, not just a conquest of the Pole. That’s the thing to cling on to. And above all, remember you have the best set of fellows under you a man could ever wish for. In the end, that’s what matters.’
I think I dreamt all night, a kaleidoscope of disturbing images – someone reading to me from a book full of pictures of giant birds; Kathleen running away down an embankment beside a river; the pony I rode to school cantering across a meadow, flanks streaming blood; my father zigzagging along an avenue of birches, weeping. The last thing I properly remembered was dear, dead Archie raising his gun to shoot his first wood pigeon. The explosion, tearing the trees apart, jolted me wide awake and turned into the furious yapping of quarrelsome dogs.
I ran out of the tent and looked for Bill. He was over by the sledges, attending to the runners. ‘By Jove, Bill,’ I cried, seizing him by the arm. ‘We should have taken them. There’s no law down here.’
‘Taken whom?’ he asked, looking blank.
‘Amundsen,’ I said. ‘Amundsen and the rest of his damned crew. We’re the law. We should have fought it out, with guns if need be.’
He moved away, forcing me to follow him. ‘Look here,’ he hissed. ‘You must pull yourself together.’ He was terribly shocked. He marched off, footsteps cracking in the snow, speaking over his shoulder in a furious whisper, urging me to lower my voice.
He told me afterwards that my suggestion that we should abandon civilised practices and take the Norwegians by force half convinced him I’d lost my mind. Apparently Forde and Crean were standing only a dozen paces from us. I’d been aware of no one in the whole white world but him.
I know I was not myself, but I don’t doubt if Oates and Birdie had been there they would have backed me up to the hilt. Unlike Bill, who’s been trained to dissect the dead, we three have been schooled to provide the corpses.
I came to sanity under Bill’s tuition. He wisely said I must continue as if nothing had happened, as if Amundsen didn’t exist. It was unthinkable that our scientific projects should be sacrificed in a vulgar scramble to reach the Pole.
Bill’s definition of vulgarity hardly meets my own, but I said what he wanted to hear. What other choices did I have? ‘You’re right,’ I agreed, ‘as always, you’re absolutely right. We must go on, without fear or panic, and do our best for the honour of our country.’ I sounded convincing.
In the circumstances I couldn’t stay in one place. The next morning I organised a party to set off for Corner Camp with the double purpose of taking out more stores and meeting Bowers and Oates. We man-hauled, as I was damned if I was going to travel with those bloodthirsty dogs. I didn’t let on, but I fancied there was something broken in me, some spring that no longer worked. When we halted, even my pipe tasted of ashes.
There were five pony walls in evidence at Corner Camp, a sure sign that Birdie and Oates had passed that way. We left six weeks’ stores for men and animals and made our return. A bit of a blizzard blew up and raged for two days, but I refused to call a permanent halt. There were one or two murmurs at this, particularly from Atkinson and Teddy Evans. They really must learn that the more beastly the conditions, the
harder the slog, the better prepared we shall be for the journey next year.
Our reunion with Bowers and Oates at Safety Camp was hardly a joyful occasion. Meares, on hearing their approach, had run from the tent – apparently clad in nothing but his underpants – and blurted out the news concerning Amundsen.
Bowers was very cut up – mostly on my account, which I found irritating. He launched into a passionate attack on the Norwegians, calling Amundsen a rotter, a sneak, and a good few other names. ‘If there’s any justice,’ he said, ‘once the rest of the world gets to hear of his deceitful behaviour, he’ll be condemned by all right-thinking men.’ His voice shook, and his eyes were so full of pity I might have been a household pet he’d discovered mangled in some accident.
‘It makes not the slightest difference to me,’ I replied. ‘I shall proceed as if he wasn’t there, and I advise you to do the same.’
He went quite red in the face, and I could have kicked myself for sounding so cold with him. It’s to be regretted that the best of me, the part that recognises both the horror and beauty of destiny, remains submerged. When things go wrong – and God knows they do that with unfailing regularity – while outwardly I exhibit all the signs of a man in the grip of bad temper, underneath I’m actually going through a healing, if melancholy, acceptance of forces beyond my control. However, the process is so debilitating that I’m forced to assume a reserve I’m far from feeling, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to function.
Some time later Bill came and told me the men were very low. The recent blizzard, coming on top of everything else, had much reduced them and they were all feeling the cold. ‘Morale is rock-bottom,’ he warned. I decided the only course was to move immediately to Hut Point.
Bill advised against it. He said it was too dangerous, as the sea ice was possibly breaking up. I’m afraid I had to remind him who was in command. I hated doing it, but really, if every time I give an order every Tom, Dick and Harry feels free to put his oar in, we’ll get nowhere. I apologised afterwards.
The Birthday Boys Page 9
