They now made excellent time, completing fourteen and a half miles that day. For a while they mistakenly started heading back toward the crevasses, until, Wild noted, 'I spoke about it when Shacks altered it, he always listens to me now.' This had been written in a cipher that Wild used in his diary for some of his more contentious comments. Shackleton, too, was cautious: regardless of what he might truly think, he assiduously avoided passing judgement in writing. It was only Marshall who unreservedly recorded his innermost thoughts.
For the next week they continued unhindered, and, other than Shackleton's snow blindness, only Wild was troubled. 'I have been leading all day, so have been able to keep a decent course,' he wrote in pointed dissatisfaction with his comrades. 'I pray daily that A. may be struck dumb, his incessant idiotic chatter would make a saint curse. His pony is getting like him and don't pull.' It was an astute observation: Chinaman was the oldest and weakest of the ponies.
On 15 November, Wild spied Depot A, which they had laid in the spring. They picked up fodder and deposited three days' worth of food, enough, with no delays, to reach the depot Joyce was due to lay for their return. They were so pleased with their achievement that they put a cupful of the ponies' Maujee ration in their own pemmican and 'enjoyed it immensely'.
They continued to make good progress, although their views were frequently cut off by overcast weather. 'Surely there is no more desolate or barren spot in the world,' wrote Marshall, 'well suited to what one would imagine the end of the world to be like.' Shackleton, conversely, wrote, 'It has been a wonderful and successful week so different to this time 6 years ago when I was toiling along 5 miles a day over the same ground.'
The difference, clearly, was the ponies, but their longevity would soon become an issue, as Shackleton noted:
We seem to have arrived at a latitude where there is no wind and the snow remains where it falls . . . for we were sinking in well over our ankles and the poor ponies are having a most trying time. They break through the crust on the surface and flounder up to their hocks; and each step they have to pull their feet out through the brittle crust: It is telling more on Chinaman than on the others and he is going slowly the chafe of the snow crust on his fetlocks has galled him so we will have to shoot him at the next depot.
That came three days later, on the evening of 21 November, when, having passed 8i°S, they stopped for the night, built a snow wall, and took the poor thing behind it, where he was shot. Marshall then cut the pony's throat to bleed him, and he and Wild cut off most of the meat, leaving sixty pounds at Depot B and taking another eighty, not only varying their diet but giving them added protection from scurvy. The men were only too glad of the meat, because they had not received enough since Marshall's carefully planned food allowances had been cut.
The depot, with a single black flag flying on a piece of bamboo lashed to the now discarded sledge, was left behind the next morning. In order to expedite their return journey and help them reach the stash of food, they began constructing a snow cairn each night, the series marking their way home. They now virtually flew along, making more than seventeen miles on four consecutive days, despite Wild, as well as Quan and Grisi, feeling ill. Wild slowly came around, in part due to the horse meat, which was served both cooked and not. 'Lunched on raw frozen horse flesh dipped in fat,' Marshall recorded exuberantly one evening. 'This saves oil & ordinary lunch ration. Not v. filling or pleasant, but when hungry it does not come amiss.'
Meanwhile, Marshall's primary medical effort had been an attempt to pull an aching tooth from Adams. Not having any forceps, however, he broke it. It was not until twenty-four hours later that a second attempt, like the first without any anaesthetic, was successful.
But all of this faded into insignificance on 26 November when they camped to the east of what Scott had called the Shackleton Inlet. 'A day to remember,' wrote the man for whom it was named, 'for we have passed the Furthest South yet reached by man. Tonight we are in Latitude 82.18% S i68°E.' The men celebrated with 'a nice little tot of curacoa [sic], which made us all feel quite happy.'
For Shackleton, the torment of years - the stigma of being invalided home and the embarrassment of Scott's descriptions of him being pulled on a sledge - had been overcome. But not forgotten. 'This we have been able to do,' he crowed, 'in much less time than we did on the last long march . . . with Captain Scott.' Indeed, they had achieved it in a full month less than Scott - twenty-nine days compared to fifty-nine - and that boded well for their assault on the Pole. Even Wild, not normally an optimist, thought the prize within their grasp. 'I am beginning to think we shall get to the Pole all right,' he wrote, 'but am doubtful about getting back again.'
It was now all totally new - sights never before seen by human eyes, paths never before trodden. As huge new mountains appeared in the clear air - with sheer granite cliffs towering thousands of feet over the plain - the men marvelled at a place 'so strange and unlike anything else in the world'. They were also mystified by what Wild described as 'quite a brilliant gleam of light in the sky above the southern horizon which we cannot account for'. But two days later they were brought back to Earth with a large dose of reality.
'Noble little Grisi was shot tonight,' recorded Marshall. 'He had worked faithfully & pluckily without refusing & was never touched with a whip.' They again made a depot and left behind enough pony flesh and other provisions for their return. But they were down to two ponies and the increase in weight on each sledge meant that the men had to go into harness and share the pulling. This in turn meant an increase in the calories they burned and, therefore, in their hunger.
Equally as worrisome, the mountains that had long been to their right curved to the east so as to cut straight in front of their path. Shackleton had hoped to find the Pole located on the Barrier; climbing mountains was not on his agenda. Yet another problem was developing: the Barrier itself seemed to be changing. They started going over a series of long undulations that Wild described as being like 'a long and quiet deep sea swell with crests about half a mile apart'. In the hollow of these the snow was so deep and soft that the ponies could hardly advance, and within several days Quan was exhausted.
All along Quan had not only drawn the heaviest load, but had been the comedian and mischief-maker. In one brief period he had consumed 'the great part of the inside of a horse cloth, about a fathom of rope, several pieces of leather and other odds and ends such as nosebag buckle . . . he would rather eat a yard of creosoted rope than his maize and maujee indeed, he often in sheer wantonness throws it all over the snow.' Now he was worn out. On 1 December he broke down and they had to take him out of the harness. As soon as they camped, Wild shot him. 'Got only enough meat for about 5 days off him,' Marshall noted disappointedly; there would be no provisions at 'Quan Depot'. Marshall was not the only one unhappy. 'Last night,' Wild recorded, 'poor little Socks kept us all awake for a long time neighing and whinnying for his lost companions.'
The party had now come to a decision point. They had been moving south-southeast, but ahead appeared a jumble of pressure ridges and exceptionally difficult ice. 'It seems as though the Barrier end had come and there is going to be a change in some gigantic way in keeping with the vastness of the whole place,' Shackleton wrote the evening Quan was killed. 'We fervently trust it will not delay us in our march South.' The unknown geography and the lack of ponies were two obvious reasons for his concerns. Another was food. 'At one moment our thoughts are in the grandeur of the scene,' he wrote, 'the next on what we would have to eat if only we were let loose in a good restaurant, for we are very hungry these days and we know that we are likely to be for another three months.'
Their minds were made up for them by lunchtime the next day. 'We had got close enough to the disturbance ahead of us to see that it consisted of enormous pressure ridges heavily crevassed running a long way East and not the slightest chance of our being able to get Southing that way any longer on the Barrier,' Shackleton wrote. However, directly south of them a
ppeared to be a large glacier leading south rather than southeast, in front of which stood a small red-coloured mountain. During their meal, according to Marshall, 'it was unanimously agreed to change course going S. to what appears to be the Golden Gateway to the S.'
Marshall's ethereal description was of a low, snow-filled pass between the red mountain and a bare rock point three miles southwest of it. Beyond this, Wild thought, 'a glacier opens up leading through the mountains in an almost due south direction.' With anticipation matched only by uncertainty, they gingerly made their way south until they reached a field of hard sastrugi seven miles from the mountain. There they camped and prepared for the morrow by attaching spikes to the bottom of their ski boots and fitting themselves out with anything that could resemble climbing gear.
The next morning, bad light delayed their departure until 9.00, when they headed out, 'leaving Socks in charge of camp'. Soon they found themselves in a sea of crevasses and roped together. 'These got larger and more frequent,' wrote Wild, until 'our way was barred by an immense chasm about 60 to 80 feet deep, and about 60 wide, with overhanging sides.' Several hundred yards to the west, however, the chasm closed and they were able to continue. After a passage over dozens more crevasses and an area of smooth blue ice, they reached the mountain and clambered up a rock face followed by a snow slope and then more rock. At 3.00 p.m., after six hours on the move, they attained the summit and saw a scene of almost indescribable grandeur.
'There burst upon our vision an open road to the South,' wrote Shackleton, 'for there stretched a great glacier running almost South and North between the great mountain ranges.' It extended, according to Marshall:
as far as the eye could reach, flanked on either side by rugged ice-covered mountains, until lost sight of 60 miles distant where the mountains on the East flank and . . . the West formed a 'narrow' or waist, which forecast great ice disturbances as the glacier flowed from the distant plateau, which we now realised guarded the secrets of the Pole itself.
The glacier, wrote Wild:
must be the largest in the world; it is at least 30 miles wide and we could see over 100 miles of its length, beyond that must be the Great Plateau. Our Gateway is only a very small side entrance . . . the main flow runs out E & has made a fearful mess of the Barrier for many miles in that direction.
They had thus in one fell swoop answered all of their questions of recent days. To the south of the red mountain, which they named Mount Hope, the colossal glacier smashed into the Barrier, causing the disturbances they had seen. What this meant was that Marshall's Golden Gateway - 'The Gateway' as it is now named - was not only the beginning of the path through the mountains, but the only one they would have been able to cross on to the glacier. And the glow in the southern horizon for which Wild could not account was the glacier's ice blink - a bright white light in the sky reflected up from the vast areas of ice beyond the viewer's sight.
They had also answered beyond doubt where their trail would lead. From their pinnacle they could see the mountain chain running far to the southeast, and they realised that continuing on the Barrier would mean finding their way blocked by impassable heights. Indeed, although they did not know it, they had found one of the few paths available to convey them through the Transantarctic Mountains. They all agreed upon following it.
'Tomorrow we hope to enter this Southern gateway,' wrote Marshall, who took several photographs after carrying the heavy plate camera all the way to the top of Mount Hope. 'Shall never forget the ist sight of this promised land. The Almighty has indeed been good to us.'
Their good fortune continued the next day, with weather so warm that they stripped to their shirts. Shackleton, Adams and Marshall pulled one sledge, followed by Wild leading Socks. They found 'that taking two loaded sledges and a pony across crevasses is a much more difficult business than getting over them unencumbered, but with care and caution we got through without any serious mishap.' The three men would break through any snow bridges over the crevasses with ice axes, so that Wild and Socks could see them, 'and then I took him over with a rush, and the good little fellow cleared them all splendidly.' After ascending a long slope through The Gateway, they camped near the edge of the glacier.
On 5 December they began struggling up what they called 'The Great Glacier', experiencing again the drawbacks of being accompanied by a pony. Being unshod, Socks could not pull over the bare, glassy blue ice they had to cross most of the day, so he was unharnessed and led by Wild as the others relayed. 'He behaved remarkably well under the circumstances,' Wild wrote, 'several times he got his hind quarters into crevasses, but he did not get much scared. It was an awful job though . . . on several occasions I thought both he and I were going straight to Hell.'
They camped that night under a vast granite cliff rising sheer 2,000 feet, a site so recognisable that Shackleton decided to establish another depot so that they need not haul as much up the glacier. Never the less, the next day they advanced little more than three miles, relaying three loads over a steep jumble of ice. 'Two of us pulled the sledge in front and two went alongside to steady it,' Wild wrote. T would rather walk 40 miles than do it again.' Shackleton suffered terribly from snowblindness, but most trying of all was moving Socks. They could not take him over most sections, so Wild guided him close to the cliffs and they walked over huge piles of rocks and rubble. When he did have to cross the ice, they cut a road for him with their ice axes.
One might assume that prior to falling asleep that night Wild looked into a crystal ball, for he wrote: 'Just before camping tonight we passed close to two huge crevasses on our right and as we stopped we could see others looming up ahead, so possibly we are in for another exciting day tomorrow.' The next morning the party moved closer to the centre of the glacier, away from the frightening and brutally difficult edges, where secondary glaciers debouched into it from the mountains. It was a fateful choice.
Not long after lunch, Wild suddenly stepped into space, felt a violent blow on his shoulder, and experienced a fearful rush of something past him as he dropped into a horrible chasm. The others, ten yards ahead, heard a muffled cry and looked behind them. In the instant that they turned their heads, they saw nothing - Wild and Socks had vanished.
17
THE WESTERN PARTY
When the support party turned north on 7 November, its members were relieved. Danger, they believed, would no longer be accompanying them, but had followed the four men who had continued south. Their assumption was totally wrong. Perhaps it was the aura of the motorcar, but they were to find that many problems occur within a short distance of home.
Joyce, who was in charge of the support party, wanted to get the men off the Barrier as quickly as possible. To do so, he ordered a forced march, and they made excellent progress despite a poor surface. With stops only for lunch and dinner, they ploughed ahead from 7.00 a.m. until reaching the Discovery hut at 1.30 the next morning. Several days later, after recovering, they continued towards Cape Royds. Near Glacier Tongue they met Murray, Day and Roberts, who had brought out r,8oo pounds of provisions and gear that Shackleton wanted depoted in case later parties were cut off by open water. The entire group had an easy return that night thanks to the motor-car.
For the next several weeks the men engaged in their own duties. Murray concentrated on freshwater biology. Priestley went to the lower slopes of Mount Erebus to examine a series of cones composed of kenyte (a feldspar first noted by J.W. Gregory on Mount Kenya). Joyce skinned and preserved nine Weddell seals and continued work on Aurora Australis. And Marston attempted to capture the wondrous natural colours of the Antarctic in his oil paintings.
Throughout this time, Priestley patiently waited for the threat of bad weather to disappear so that an investigation of several parasitic cones on the northern slopes of Mount Erebus could be launched. The skies did not clear totally, but the scheduled departure date for the Western Party drew closer, so the Erebus trip had to start regardless of weather. On 23 November Murray, Pr
iestley, Joyce, Marston and Brocklehurst left the base. In order to travel lightly and quickly, they took a week's supply of food but only one three-man tent, the plan being for two men to sleep outside each night.
The weather was bright when they left, but that afternoon a strong southerly wind arose. They camped 2,000 feet above sea level about five miles from base, near a steep nunatak - a rocky outcrop exposed through the ice. 'When we camped the drift had ceased,' Priestley later wrote,
and we were thus unable to notice as we should have done that the nunatak simply caused the wind to deflect its course from across the mountain to straight down the slopes we were perched on. Another mistake we were betrayed into was that of camping on a glacier instead of on a snowdrift, and this was due to the fact that the glacier was covered with several inches of recent snow.
Priestley had volunteered to sleep outside that night, while the other four crammed uncomfortably into the small tent. He moved to a nook in some rocks near the top of a small hill. 'A few hours later I woke up to find . . . a blizzard and that the drift was sweeping in a steady cloud over my head.' Fighting a fierce wind, Priestley crawled to the sledge, where he wrapped the tent cloth around his sleeping bag. He remembered:
It was in this position that I spent the next seventy-two hours . . . getting gradually at every change in the direction of the wind shifted down a yard or two at a time and pushed along the wind-swept surface of the glacier until I was some twenty or thirty yards from the tent and in danger of getting swept . . . either on to some rocks a quarter of a mile below or else straight down the glacier and over a hundred foot drop into Horseshoe Bay.
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition Page 26
