Meanwhile one of the tent poles gave way and it was impossible to keep any snow on the skirting of the tent, so the men inside lay terrified at the 'constant expectation of seeing the tent leave them in the lurch'. For the time being they were warm enough, and, although they could not cook anything, according to Murray, 'we ate the dry biscuit and pemmican. The little snow under the floorcloth was squeezed in the hand till it became ice, and we sucked this for drink. We were anxious about Priestley and occasionally opened the doorflap and hailed him, when he always replied that he was all right.'
Three times in the ensuing days the men in the tent passed biscuits and raw pemmican to Priestley, and one time Marston brought him chocolate, but for nearly eighty hours he drank nothing 'but such fragments of ice as I could prize up with the point of a small safety pin'. Once when Joyce came to see him, the drift was so thick that he had to find his way back by shouting and listening for the return calls. He was frostbitten so badly that the others felt it unsafe to attempt to reach Priestley again.
'To an experienced floe and barrier sledger it may sound a lie that we could not reach the sledge which was four yards or less from the tent,' Priestley wrote. 'But it must be remembered that we were lying on the slopes of a clean swept glacier which finnesko could get no hold on; our spiked ski-boots were on the icepicks round the sledge where they had been hung to dry.'
After three days there came a brief respite from the blizzard, and Marston carefully crawled down to Priestley. The two of them painstakingly dragged the sleeping bag up to the tent. 'Four men in a three-man tent is a big squeeze,' Priestley wrote, 'but five was fearful, and it was some time before I managed to get even sitting room.' After checking his feet for frostbite, Priestley lay down on top of Murray and Marston and 'by a system of wriggling we managed to get fairly settled.'
At about 5.30 the next morning, the wind began to die away. They had a quick breakfast, although it was not pleasant because the paraffin had spilled in the food. Then, after a delay to revive Priestley's frostbitten feet, they headed back for the base as quickly as their stiff, starving bodies would go, their scientific objectives abandoned. 'We left all the provisions there,' Priestley noted, 'and unanimously named the nunatak "Misery Nunatak", and we were all about as glad to leave the place as a soul would be to leave Purgatory.'
As the party reached the hut, Mount Erebus 'was noticed to be in eruption . . . Huge diverging columns of steam were rising from the crater, and behind could be seen curious clouds of feathery cirrus.' The mountain, seemingly, wanted to remind them who was more powerful.
None of the frostbite received on Mount Erebus proved significant, and on i December Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst left to stock the depot at Butter Point for the return of the Northern Party. They were then to return, pick up supplies for themselves, and proceed back to the west coast and up the Ferrar Glacier to Depot Nunatak in search of fossils in the sandstone soil of the surrounding mountain range. For sixteen miles they and 1,200 pounds of equipment and provisions were carried by the motor-car. The sea ice was very unstable, however, and Day and Marston were almost trapped on their return by fresh cracks in the ice. It was the last journey for the motor-car, which was taken up to the hut and retired.
Four days later, the three men reached Butter Point. 'The going was very heavy and the sun very hot,' Brocklehurst wrote. 'We took off all our clothes except drawers & vest. I took photos of the sledge with our friend the Skua [but] Armytage got behind the sledge as he did not fancy being in his drawers & vest in a photo.'
After establishing the depot, they returned to Cape Royds only to turn about face and start all over again on 9 December. With their departure, Murray, Joyce, Day, Marston and Roberts continued the routine scientific observations, made a variety of zoological studies and slowly prepared the base for the return of Nimrod.
The journey back to Butter Point was a misery. 'It was bad going on the ice & we broke through & let us into water in place so we got our feet very wet,' Brocklehurst wrote about the day of their arrival at Butter Point. 'The sun beat down on us splitting our faces & lips, one could feel one's skin crack, the last mile to Butter Point seemed to be endless.'
On 15 December the party started to ascend the Ferrar Glacier, Priestley carefully looking for fossils. He was to be disappointed, in more ways than one. T have seldom seen a sedimentary rock that looks more unfossiliferous,' he wrote on 21 December. 'Many of the boulders are coated with a hard crust of white opaque salt and if there was any lime in the sandstone it has probably been dissolved out long ago.' He was also frustrated because Armytage informed him that they would not be able to go all the way to Depot Nunatak due to having to be back at Butter Point by 1 January. On that date they were scheduled to meet the Northern Party, with Mawson, Priestley and Brocklehurst looking for precious metals and David, Mackay and Armytage returning to base.
Even more, however, Priestley was chagrined by having been let down by the maps and reports from Scott's expedition. 'There are evidently serious defects in the map near this point,' he wrote. 'The whole of the bluff opposite is marked as Beacon Sandstone, and from the face of the cliff here it is easily seen for at least 3000 feet to be granite, the very grain in the stones can be seen.' Later still he found a 'grave error' in the map of the mass of rocks that Scott's party had named 'Solitary Rocks'. The previous expedition had indicated that they formed an island with the glacier flowing down on either side. However, Priestley wrote,
Armytage and myself have taken advantage of the settled fine weather to . . . walk down to the north end of the Solitary Rocks. We have followed the bulge of the glacier round and have definitely proved the Solitary Rocks to be a peninsula joined to the main north wall of the glacier by an isthmus of granite at least 1000 feet high.
In the ensuing period, they further contributed to the knowledge of the area. 'One good comprehensive, although rough, survey of the northern lobe of the glacier has thus been made in the last 3 or 4 days,' Priestley wrote with pride.
As far as the idea of geographical and geological exploration being the main object I have already gathered more information and made more corrections to the map than I could have hoped to do in the whole time. As far as finding fossils is concerned, however, we are as far from that as ever, as owing to our being misled . . . by the map.
Shortly after Christmas the party retreated towards Butter Point, arriving as scheduled on New Year's Day. The Northern Party was nowhere to be seen. For most of the next three weeks, Shackleton's orders forced them to remain there, frustrated by the lack of scientific study the location offered, and able to concentrate only on little things, pleasant and not. 'One of the worst things I know is to wake up with a mouth full of little white hairs, and for every hair one pulls out six seem to take its place,' Brocklehurst wrote crossly one day. 'Everything is covered with these little hairs about an inch and a half long out of our Reindeer sleeping bags. Last night I turned the bag inside out and shook it, but it is every bit as bad if not worse.'
To relieve their ennui and their growing concern for the Northern Party, on 6 January they went to the Strand Moraines, a day's hike to the south, to gather geological specimens. Then on 12 January they made a short trip to Dry Valley, where Priestley discovered a raised beach about sixty feet above sea level and Brocklehurst climbed a nearby mountain. By 15 January they were back at Butter Point. 'Today the ship is due,' Brocklehurst wrote, 'be we wonder whether she will come and hope she will, are looking forward to getting our mails.'
But the ship did not come, nor did the Northern Party. One can only wonder if, during that long wait, the three men were sobered by a vision one night when Brocklehurst dreamed
that the ponies died early and Shackleton was unsuccessful, while Mackay sat on Butter Point when we arrived back explaining how he had quarrelled with the Professor and Mawson and the rope had broken while the Professor and Mawson were on some very thin ice. About as ill-omened a dream as I have ever heard.
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p; While the Western Party waited, ill at ease, across McMurdo Sound an effort was made to alleviate any problems for Shackleton and his companions. On 15 January a party left Cape Royds under Joyce to establish the depot near Minna Bluff, approximately seventy miles on to the Barrier. With them was a strange sight - eight dogs pulling a sledge. Throughout his time at the base, Joyce had been the only one interested in working with the dogs. The others had enjoyed them as pets, but had made no effort to drive them.
Joyce, however, persisted, and on the morning of 19 January the dogs were to be found pulling a sledge so quickly over the Barrier that he had to put two men on it to reduce the speed, so they could keep up. Four days later they came to a heavily crevassed area, where once the four centre dogs all fell through a snow bridge to the length of their traces. A dog, however - even a standard sledge dog weighing 100 pounds, which Marshall indicated these did not - can be hauled up by a single man, and they were soon on their way.
Late at night on 25 January they reached the target site, upon which Shackleton and Joyce had agreed during the spring depot journey. It lay on a line drawn through a specific peak on the Bluff and the top of Mount Discovery, with, according to Shackleton, 'a cross bearing secured by getting the centre peak of White Island in line with a peak of Mount Erebus'. The party erected a mound of snow ten feet high, on top of which they put two eleven-foot bamboo poles, tied together and flying three black flags. It could be seen, they estimated, for eight miles.
After leaving supplies at the depot, they headed north on 27 January, stopping later that day when they sighted a pole projecting from the snow. It turned out to be a depot that had been laid for Scott's southern party in spring 1902. A southerly wind led the men to hoist a sail on the sledge, which raced along behind the dogs at a zippy four miles an hour. When they reached the region of the crevasses, Joyce counted them, reporting that they passed 127, ranging from two to thirty feet in width. After a day lost to a blizzard, they arrived at Hut Point on 30 January.
Not yet satisfied, Joyce procured a second load of stores and on 2 February started out again. In order to avoid the crevasses, they headed almost due east, towards Cape Crozier, for two days. They then turned south and, after being held in their tents by a blizzard for two days, reached the depot without having seen a single crevasse.
'We expected to find the Southern Party camped there,' Joyce wrote, 'and to surprise them with the luxuries we had brought out for them, but they were not there. As our orders were to return on the 10th if the Southern Party did not turn up, we began to feel rather uneasy.'
They lay a series of flags towards the Bluff, so that Shackleton's group would not be able to miss the depot. They then headed south looking for their comrades. But it was to no avail. They reached the depot again at noon on 16 February, made certain that everything was secure, and began their return to the coast, full of gloomy thoughts. The dogs, on the other hand, were ecstatic about their chance to run: on the day of their return to Hut Point, they covered forty-five miles. Nothing, seemingly, would stop their love of the road, as Joyce recorded:
One day I released Tripp, because he had a chafed leg . . . for the whole day he ran in his place in the team, as if he had been harnessed up. He slept about half a mile from camp that night, and when I tried to coax him over in the morning he would not come, but as soon as we got under way he came running up to his old place.
It was a lesson finally learned, but it was too late to help Shackleton. The main question for Joyce and the others was could anything help Shackleton? Would the Southern Party come back at all?
Shortly before Joyce arrived at the Minna Bluff depot for the first time, Armytage, Priestley and Brocklehurst camped on the sea ice at the foot of Butter Point. Neither the ship nor the Northern Party had arrived, and they planned to start home after breakfast. Brocklehurst remained in his sleeping bag early that morning when Priestley left the tent. 'We heard him run towards the depot, then stop and hurry back, it was obvious that something had happened,' wrote Brocklehurst. Priestley burst into the tent to tell them that the ice they were on had broken away, and they were drifting north towards the open sea on a floe.
In an instant all three were outside. Priestley was only too correct there were already two miles of open water between their floe and the shore. They quickly struck camp, loaded up the sledge, and headed north to see if they could get off the floe towards Cape Bernacchi. Their movement was checked by another lane of water, however, and after some discussion they returned to their original camp. Regular assessments throughout the day gave them little encouragement as, although they seemed to have stopped heading north, they could no long even see the Butter Point depot. Their anxiety was increased by the knowledge that they had food for only four days, but worse was the fact that unless the wind blew them back to shore they would be doomed to die anyway when their floe became battered by the open sea and disintegrated beneath them.
That night at around 11.30, as they lay in their sleeping bags to keep warm, they suddenly heard heavy bumps and the sounds of ice splitting. 'We began to realise the inevitable fate for us if we remained on the floe,' Priestley wrote matter-of-factly.
It is a well known fact that the killer whale lives round about the pack and breaks it up by bumping it in order to get the animals off it for food, and outside our tent there was a large school of them playing and one of them bumped directly beneath our tent cracking the ice in all directions.
Brocklehurst was considerably less analytical. 'No joke to be eaten by one of those & we have seen them come right up on the ice to break it down to get seals off it,' he wrote nervously. 'Actually some of our ship's crew had been nearly caught last year.' It was not, he thought, what he had expected when he signed on. The ice floe, meanwhile, continued to be chipped away both by the waves and the killer whales.
18
NEAREST THE POLE
'The first few falls are decidedly upsetting to the nerves & heart,' Wild wrote with great understatement about dropping into a crevasse. 'To find oneself suddenly standing on nothing, then to be brought up with a painful jerk & looking down into a pitch black nothing is distinctly disturbing, & there is the additional fear that the rope may break. After a few dozen falls (I have had hundreds) the nervous shock lessens until the majority of men look upon the experience as lightly as an ordinary stumble.'
It was no ordinary stumble on 7 December on the Great Glacier, however. 'Saw the pony sledge with the forward end down a crevasse & Wild reaching out from the side of the gulf,' Shackleton wrote about the moments when the three men pulling the forward sledge raced back to help their comrade. 'No sign of the Pony.' Nor was there to be any. Socks had escaped the bullet that was his appointed fate, but only because his hooves had broken through a snow bridge that the men had safely passed over. He had disappeared into 'a black bottomless pit'.
'Wild had a most marvellous escape, as he had the leading rope twisted round his hand at the time & only saved himself by one arm,' Marshall wrote, also noting, 'on arrival he had climbed out & was deadly pale.' While Wild composed himself, the others looked in vain down the crevasse, but 'noble little Socks had found a resting place at last. He died in harness like a true soldier. Not a sign of him down this terrible abyss & not a sound to be heard. One only hopes he broke his neck.'
Things could have been worse. 'Fortunately for us and Wild, Socks swingletree snapped and so the sledge was saved,' Shackleton wrote. The swingletree was a horizontal crossbar to which the pony's harness traces were attached, and which in turn was attached to the sledge by a pivot at the centre, allowing for freedom in the movements of the pony, while still controlling the sledge. It had broken across the middle, saving Wild and the sledge. It was a near thing in more ways than one. 'After shooting my pony I had suggested the replacement of Socks swingletree with mine which was copperbound and reinforced,' Marshall wrote. 'Had this been done it would not have broken and we should have lost Wild, pony & sledge!'
As it was, th
ey now had approximately half a ton to haul, a damaged sledge, and no store of fresh meat. All they could do was hitch themselves to both sledges and move ahead. It was not fun. 'Crossing crevasses all rest of afternoon,' wrote Marshall, 'a terribly treacherous surface, as there is nothing to indicate their presence . . . Sh. and I both went through just before camping. This has upset Sh. & he is not in good form. A whole line of nasty stuff ahead of us for tomorrow.'
As careful as they were, to a certain extent whether they went the way of Socks seemed out of their hands. All they could do, according to Marshall, was trust in Providence:
'Provy' became a personality and a dominant force in a world of our own, more than 2000 miles from civilisation, which no other human eye had ever seen. 'Luck' - there was no such thing, for luck comes to man whose foresight and planning can ensure perfection to the highest degree possible, and after that, what cannot be planned or foreseen is in the hands of 'Provy.' This was Shackleton's creed.
Providence or not, the following day proved better than expected, as they reached hard blue glacier ice, allowing them to gain more than twelve miles. The day after that more than atoned for their good fortune, however. A stiff incline that took them up to just shy of 3,000 feet forced them to relay the sledges, slowing them considerably.
It became no easier. Due to their crawling advance, they had to cut back on food to have any hope of reaching the Pole. Within several days they had consumed most of the maujee ration that had been meant for the ponies. The maize proved more difficult to eat, because they did not have enough paraffin to boil it, so on 10 December, while Shackleton looked for geological specimens, the others used flat rocks to grind up the grain. They managed only one pannikin of badly prepared flour, however, and stopped. The irony was that they now hauled rocks that weighed more than the pestle and mortar they had earlier discarded, and that would have allowed them to grind the maize efficiently.
Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition Page 27
