Shooting Stars: Ten Historical Miniatures

by Stefan Zweig

  The plan has been thought out in a masterly manner, even foreseeing accidents in detail. And there are indeed accidents. After two days’ journey the motor sledges break down and have to be left lying there, useless ballast. The ponies are not as tough as they might have expected either, but in this case organic triumphs over technical equipment: those that have to be shot provide the dogs with welcome, warm nourishment rich in blood to give them new energy.

  They set out in separate groups on 1st November 1911. The photographs they took show the strange caravan consisting of first thirty, then twenty, then ten and finally only five men making their way through the white wilderness of a lifeless, primeval world. There is always a man going ahead, muffled up in furs and fabric, a being of wild, barbaric appearance with only his eyes and his beard showing. His hand, gloved in fur, holds a pony by the halter as it drags his heavily laden sledge along, and behind him comes another man in the same clothing and with the same attitude, followed by yet another, twenty black dots moving on in a line in that endless, dazzling white. At night they huddle in their tents, erecting ramparts of snow in the direction from which the wind is blowing to protect the ponies, and in the morning the march begins again, monotonous and dreary. They move through the icy air as it drinks human breath for the first time in millennia.

  But there is more cause for concern. The weather remains poor: instead of going forty kilometres they can sometimes make only thirty, and every day is precious now they know that someone else is advancing towards the same destination from the other direction. Every small incident here becomes dangerous. A dog has run away, a pony will not eat—all these things are alarming, because values change so terrifyingly in this wilderness. The worth of every living creature here is multiplied by a thousand, is even irreplaceable. Immortality may depend on the four hooves of a single pony, a cloudy sky with a storm coming may prevent something for ever. And the men’s own health is beginning to deteriorate: some have snow blindness, others have frostbitten limbs, the ponies are getting wearier all the time, and have to be kept short of food; and finally, just before the Beardmore Glacier, they collapse. The men have to do their sad duty: these brave animals, who have become their friends over two years here in isolation, and accordingly companionship, whom everyone knows by name and who have had affection lavished on them, must be killed. They call this sad place “Shambles Camp” because of the butchery that occurred there. Some members of the expedition split off at this bloodstained place and go back; the others brace themselves to make the last effort, the cruel way over the glacier, that dangerous wall of ice that surrounds the Pole, a wall that only the fire of a passionate human will can destroy.

  The distance they march in a day is getting less and less, for the snow here forms a granulated crust, with the result that they have to haul the sledges rather than pull them along. The hard ice cuts the runners, the soft ice rubs the men’s feet sore as they walk through its sandy consistency. But they do not give up. On 30th December they have reached 87 degrees latitude, Shackleton’s ultimate point. Here the last group must turn back, leaving only five chosen members of the expedition to go on to the Pole. Scott looks at that last group. They dare not protest, but their hearts are heavy to think they must turn back so close to the destination and leave the glory of having seen the Pole first to their companions. But the dice have been cast. Once again they shake hands with each other, making a manly effort to hide their emotion, and then the final group turns. Two small, indeed tiny processions move on, one going south to the unknown, the other going north, homeward bound. Again and again, both groups look back to sense the last presence of living friends. Soon the last figure is out of sight. The five who have been chosen for the final stage of the journey go on into unknown territory: Scott, Bowers, Oates, Wilson and Evans.

  THE SOUTH POLE

  The accounts written by the five become uneasier in those last days; like the blue needle of the compass, they begin to tremble close to the Pole. “It is a big strain as the shadows creep slowly round from our right through ahead to our left!” But now and then hope sparkles more and more brightly. Scott describes the distances covered more and more feelingly. “Only another ninety miles to the Pole, but it’s going to be a stiff pull both ways apparently.” That is the voice of exhaustion. And two days later: “Only 63 miles from the Pole tonight. We ought to do the trick, but oh! for a better surface!” Then, however, we suddenly hear a new, victorious note. “Only 51 miles to the Pole tonight. If we don’t get to it we shall be d—d close.” On 14th January hope becomes certainty. “We are less than 40 miles from the Pole. It is a critical time, but we ought to pull through.” On 14th January hope becomes cheerfulness in the account. You feel from Scott’s heartfelt lines how tense their sinews are, tense with hope, how all their nerves quiver with expectation and impatience. The prize is close, they are already reaching out to the last mystery on earth. One final effort, and they will have reached their goal.

  16TH JANUARY

  “We started off in high spirits,” Scott’s diary entry begins. They set out in the morning, earlier than usual, roused from their sleeping bags by impatience to set eyes on the fearful and beautiful mystery as soon as they can. The five men, undeterred, cheerfully march twelve kilometres through the soulless, white wilderness; they cannot miss their destination now, they have almost done a great deed on behalf of mankind. But suddenly one of the companions, Bowers, becomes uneasy. His eye fixes on a small, dark point in the vast snowfield. He dares not put his suspicion into words, but by now the same terrible thought is shaking them all to the core: that signpost could be the work of human hands. They try ingenious means of reassuring themselves. Just as Robinson Crusoe tries in vain to take the strange footprint on the island for his own, they think they must be seeing a crevasse in the ice, or perhaps a reflection. With their nerves on edge they go closer, still trying to pretend to each other, although by now they all know the truth: the Norwegian Amundsen has reached the Pole before them.

  Soon the last doubt is destroyed by the undeniable fact of a black flag hoisted on a sledge bearer above the traces of someone else’s abandoned campsite—marks left by the runners of sledges, and dogs’ paw prints. Amundsen has camped here. Something vast and hard for mankind to grasp has happened: in a molecule of time the South Pole of the earth, uninhabited for millennia, unseen by earthly eyes, has been discovered twice within two weeks. And they are the second discoverers—too late by a single month out of millions of months—the second men to reach the Pole, but coming first means everything to them and coming second nothing. So all their efforts were in vain, all their privations ridiculous, all the hopes of weeks, months, years were absurd. Scott wonders in his diary what it had all been for—for nothing but dreams? “All the day dreams must go; it will be a wearisome return.” Tears come to their eyes, and in spite of their exhaustion they cannot sleep that night. Sad and hopeless, they set out like men condemned to death on the last march to the Pole that they had expected to conquer with jubilation. No one tries to console the others; they drag themselves on without a word. On 18th January Captain Scott reaches the Pole with his four companions. Now that the idea of having been the first no longer dazzles him, all he sees, dull-eyed, is the bleakness of the landscape. There is nothing there to be seen, Scott concludes, “very little that is different from the awful monotony of the past days. Great God! this is an awful place!” The only strange thing that they discover is created not by nature but by his rival’s human hand: Amundsen’s tent with the Norwegian flag fluttering boldly and triumphantly from the rampart that humanity has now stormed. A letter from the conqueror of the Pole waits for the unknown second comer who would tread here after him, asking him to forward it to King Haakon of Norway. Scott takes it upon himself to perform this hardest duty of all, acting as a witness to the world that someone else has done the deed that he longed to be his own.

  They sadly put up the British flag, “our poor slighted Union Jack”, beside Amundsen�
��s sign of his victory. Then they leave “the goal of our ambition”, Scott writes, with prophetic misgivings, “Now for the run home and a desperate struggle. I wonder if we can do it.”

  THE COLLAPSE

  The dangers are ten times worse on the return journey. The compass guided them on the way to the Pole. Now they must also take care not to lose their own trail on the way back, not to lose it once for weeks on end, in case they miss finding the depots where they have stored their food, clothing and the warmth that a few gallons of petroleum mean. So they are uneasy about every step they take when driving snow impedes their vision, for every deviation from the trail will lead to certain death. And their bodies lack the freshness of the first march, when they were still heated by the chemical energies of plentiful food and the warmth of their Antarctic home.

  Moreover, the steel spring of their will is slack now. On the outward journey the unearthly hope of representing the curiosity and longing of all mankind kept their energies heroically together, and they acquired superhuman strength through the consciousness of doing something immortal. Now they are fighting for nothing but to save their skins, their physical, mortal existence, for a less than glorious homecoming that perhaps they fear more than they desire.

  The notes from those days make terrible reading. The weather gets worse and worse, winter has set in earlier than usual, and the soft snow forms a thick crust under their boots at an angle to the foot so that they stumble, and the frost wears down their weary bodies. There is always a little jubilation when they reach another depot after days of wandering and hesitation, and then a fleeting flame of confidence comes back into what they say. Nothing bears witness more finely to the intellectual heroism of these few men than the way that Wilson, the scientist, goes on making his observations even here, a hair’s breadth from death, and adds sixteen kilograms of rare varieties of rock to all the necessary load on his own sledge.

  But gradually human courage gives way to the superior power of nature, which here implacably, with the strength hardened by millennia, brings all the powers of cold, frost, snow and wind to bear against the five brave men. Their feet are badly injured now, and their bodies, inadequately warmed by one hot meal a day and weakened by scanty rations, are beginning to fail them. One day the companions are horrified to find that Evans, the strongest of them, is suddenly behaving strangely. He lags behind, keeps complaining of real and imaginary troubles; they are alarmed to conclude from his odd talk that the poor man has lost his mind as the result of a fall or of terrible pain. What are they to do with him? Leave him in this icy wilderness? But on the other hand they must reach the depot without delay, or else—Scott himself hesitates to write what would happen. The unfortunate Evans dies at 12.30 a.m. on 17th February, not a day’s march from Shambles Camp where, for the first time, the slaughter of their ponies a month before provides them with a better meal.

  The four men march on, but there is a disaster. The next depot brings more bitter disappointment. There is not enough oil there, and that means that they must be sparing with fuel, when warmth is the only real weapon against the cold. In the icy cold and stormy night, waking with a sense of discouragement, they hardly have the strength left to pull felt shoes on over their feet. But they drag themselves on, one of them, Oates, with frostbitten toes. The wind is blowing more sharply than ever, and at the next depot, on 2nd March, there is the cruel disappointment of again finding too little fuel to burn.

  Now fear shows through the words they leave. We feel how Scott is attempting to hold back the horror, but again and again a shrill cry of despair disturbs the peace he tries to assume. “We cannot go on like this.” Or, “One can only say, ‘God help us!’ and plod on our weary way.” “Tragedy all along the line!” he writes, and wishes for Providence to come to their aid, since none can be expected from men.

  However, they drag themselves on and on, without hope, gritting their teeth. Oates is getting worse and worse at keeping up with the others; he is more of a burden than a help to his friends. They have to delay their march at a midday temperature of minus forty-two degrees, and the unhappy man feels and knows that he is bringing death on his companions. They are already preparing for the end. Wilson, the scientist, hands out ten morphium tablets to each of them to hasten their end if necessary. They try one day’s march more with their sick companion. Then the unfortunate man himself asks them to leave him behind in his sleeping bag and go on separately. They vigorously refuse, although they all realize that his suggestion would be a relief for them. Oates manages to go a little further on his frostbitten legs to their night quarters. He sleeps with them until next morning. When they wake and look out, there is a blizzard.

  Suddenly Oates gets to his feet. “I am just going outside and may be some time,” he tells his friends. The others tremble: they all know what that will mean. But no one dares say a word to stop him. No one dares to shake his hand one last time, for they all feel, with respect, that Captain Lawrence E.G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons is going to his death like a hero.

  Three weary, weakened men drag themselves through the endless, icy, iron-hard wilderness, tired and hopeless, with only the dull instinct of self-preservation stiffening their sinews to a stumbling walk. The weather gets worse and worse, a new disappointment mocks them at every depot, there is never enough oil, enough warmth. On 21st March they are only eighteen kilometres away from a depot, but the wind is blowing so murderously that they cannot leave their tent. Every evening they hope for the next morning, so as to reach their destination, for meanwhile their provisions are running out and with them their last hope. Their heating fuel is finished, and the thermometer says forty degrees below zero. Every hope is extinguished; they now have only the choice between starving or freezing to death. The three men struggle against the inevitable end for eight days in a small tent in the middle of the white wilderness world. On 29th March they know that no miracle can save them now. So they decide not to go another step towards their fate, but wait proudly for death as they have suffered every other misfortune. They crawl into their sleeping bags, and not a sigh reaches the outside world to speak of their last suffering.

  THE DYING MAN’S LETTERS

  In those moments, facing invisible but now imminent death while the blizzard attacks the thin walls of the tent like a madman, Captain Scott remembers all to whom he is close. Alone in the iciest silence, silence never broken by a human voice, he is heroically aware of his fraternal feelings for his country, for all mankind. In this white wilderness, a mirage of the mind conjures up the image of all who were ever linked to him by love, loyalty and friendship, and he addresses them. Captain Scott writes with freezing fingers, writes letters at the hour of his death to all the living men and women he loves.

  They are wonderful letters. In the mighty presence of death all that is small and petty is dismissed; the crystalline air of that empty sky seems to breathe through his words. They are meant for individuals, but speak to all mankind. They are written at a certain time, they speak for eternity.

  He writes to his wife, asking her to take good care of his son, the best legacy he can leave her, and above all, he says, “he must guard and you must guard him against indolence. Make him into a strenuous man.” Of himself he says—at the end of one of the greatest achievements in the history of the world—“I had to force myself into being strenuous, as you know—had always an inclination to be idle.” Even so close to death he does not regret but approves of his own decision to go on the expedition. “What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey. How much better it has been than lounging in too great comfort at home.”

  And he writes in loyal comradeship to the wife of one of his companions in misfortune, to the mother of another, men who will have died with him when the letters reach home, bearing witness to their heroism. Although he is dying himself, he comforts the bereaved families of the others with his strong, almost superhuman sense of the greatness of the moment and the memorable nature of their deaths.
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  And he writes to his friends, speaking modestly for himself but with a fine sense of pride for the whole nation, whose worthy son he feels himself to be at this moment. “I may not have proved a great explorer,” he admits, “but I think [this diary] will show that the spirit of pluck and the power to endure has not passed out of our race.” And death now impels him to tell one friend what manly reserve and his own modesty has kept him from saying all his life. “I never met a man in my life whom I loved and admired more than you, but I never could show you how much your friendship meant to me, for you had much to give and I had nothing.”

  He writes one last letter, the finest of all, to the British nation, feeling bound to give a reckoning of what he did for the fame of the country on the expedition, blaming only misfortune for its end. He enumerates the various accidents that conspired against him, and in a voice to which the echo of death lends pathos he calls on “our countrymen to see that those who depend upon us are properly cared for”.