The Worst Journey in the World Apsley Cherry-Garrard (novel books to read TXT) 📖

legs when it grew intense. I don’t think I ever realized before how pathetic a horse could be under such conditions; no sound escapes him, his misery can only be indicated by those distressing spasms and by dumb movement of the head with a patient expression always suggestive of appeal.”147 Towards midnight it seemed that we were to lose him, and, apart from other considerations, we knew that unless we could keep all the surviving animals alive the risks of failure in the coming journey were much increased.

“It was shortly after midnight when I [Scott] was told that the animal seemed a little easier. At 2:30 I was again in the stable and found the improvement had been maintained; the horse still lay on its side with outstretched head, but the spasms had ceased, its eye looked less distressed, and its ears pricked to occasional noises. As I stood looking it suddenly raised its head and rose without effort to its legs; then in a moment, as though some bad dream had passed, it began to nose at some hay and at its neighbour. Within three minutes it had drunk a bucket of water and had started to feed.”148

The immediate cause of the trouble was indicated by “a small ball of semi-fermented hay covered with mucus and containing tapeworms; so far not very serious, but unfortunately attached to this mass was a strip of the lining of the intestine.”149

The recovery of Bones was uninterrupted. Two days later another pony went off his feed and lay down, but was soon well again.

Considerable speculation as to the original cause of this illness never found a satisfactory answer. Some traced it to a want of ventilation, and it is necessary to say that both the ponies who were ill stood next to the blubber stove; at any rate a big ventilator was fitted and more fresh air let in. Others traced it to the want of water, supposing that the animals would not eat as much snow as they would have drunk water; the easy remedy for this was to give them water instead of snow. We also gave them more salt than they had had before. Whatever the cause may have been we had no more of this colic, and the improvement in their condition until we started sledging was uninterrupted.

All the ponies were treated for worms; it was also found that they had lice, which were eradicated after some time and difficulty by a wash of tobacco and water. I know that Oates wished that he had clipped the ponies at the beginning of the winter, believing that they would have grown far better coats if this had been done. He also would have wished for a loose box for each pony.

No account of the ponies would be complete without mention of our Russian pony boy, Anton. He was small in height, but he was exceedingly strong and had a chest measurement of 40 inches.

Erebus and Lands End Erebus Behind Great Razorback

I believe both Anton and Dimitri, the Russian dog driver, were brought originally to look after the ponies and dogs on their way from Siberia to New Zealand. But they proved such good fellows and so useful that we were very glad to take them on the strength of the landing party. I fear that Anton, at any rate, did not realize what he was in for. When we arrived at Cape Crozier in the ship on our voyage south, and he saw the two great peaks of Ross Island in front and the Barrier Cliff disappearing in an unbroken wall below the eastern horizon, he imagined that he reached the South Pole, and was suitably elated. When the darkness of the winter closed down upon us, this apparently unnatural order of things so preyed upon his superstitious mind that he became seriously alarmed. Where the sea-ice joined the land in front of the hut was of course a working crack, caused by the rise and fall of the tide. Sometimes the seawater found its way up, and Anton was convinced that the weird phosphorescent lights which danced up out of the sea were devils. In propitiation we found that he had sacrificed to them his most cherished luxury, his scanty allowance of cigarettes, which he had literally cast upon the waters in the darkness. It was natural that his thoughts should turn to the comforts of his Siberian home, and the one-legged wife whom he was going to marry there, and when it became clear that another year would be spent in the South his mind was troubled. And so he went to Oates and asked him, “If I go away at the end of this year, will Captain Scott disinherit me?” In order to try and express his idea, for he knew little English, he had some days before been asking “what we called it when a father died and left his son nothing.” Poor Anton!

He looked long and anxiously for the ship, and with his kit-bag on his shoulder was amongst the first to trek across the ice to meet her. Having asked for and obtained a job of work there was no happier man on board: he never left her until she reached New Zealand. Nevertheless he was always cheerful, always working, and a most useful addition to our small community.

It is still usual to talk of people living in complete married happiness when we really mean, so Mr. Bernard Shaw tells me, that they confine their quarrels to Thursday nights. If then I say that we lived this life for nearly three years, from the day when we left England until the day we returned to New Zealand, without any friction of any kind, I shall be supposed to be making a formal statement of somewhat