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

it was thick all round, and no great anxiety was felt: some went out and shouted, others went north with a lantern, and Day arranged to light a paraffin flare on Wind Vane Hill. Atkinson never experienced this lull, and having seen the way blizzards will sweep down the Strait though the coastline is comparatively clear and calm, I can understand how he was in the thick of it all the time. I feel convinced that most of these blizzards are local affairs. The party which had gone north returned at 9:30 without news, and Scott became seriously alarmed. Between 9:30 and 10 six search parties started out. But time was passing and Atkinson had been away more than six hours.

The light which Atkinson had seen was a flare of tow soaked in petrol lit by Day at Cape Evans. He corrected his course and before long was under the rock upon which Day could be seen working like some lanky devil in one of Dante’s hells. Atkinson shouted again and again but could not attract his attention, and finally walked almost into the hut before he was found by two men searching the Cape. “It was all my own damned fault,” he said, “but Scott never slanged me at all.” I really think we should all have been as merciful! Wouldn’t you?

And that was that: but he had a beastly hand.

Theoretically the sun returned to us on August 23. Practically there was nothing to be seen except blinding drift. But we saw his upper limb two days later. In Scott’s words the daylight came “rushing” at us. Two spring journeys were contemplated; and with preparations for the Polar Journey, and the ordinary routine work of the station, everybody had as much on his hands as he could get through.

Lieutenant Evans, Gran and Forde volunteered to go out to Corner Camp and dig out this depot as well as that of Safety Camp. They started on September 9 and camped on the sea-ice beyond Cape Armitage that night, the minimum temperature being −45°. They dug out Safety Camp next morning, and marched on towards Corner Camp. The minimum that night was −62.3°. The next evening they made their night camp as a blizzard was coming up, the temperature at the same time being −34.5° and minimum for the night −40°. This is an extremely low temperature for a blizzard. They made a start in a very cold wind the next afternoon (September 12) and camped at 8:30 p.m. That night was bitterly cold and they found that the minimum showed −73.3° for that night. Evans reports adversely on the use of the eiderdown bag and inner tent, but here none of our Winter Journey men would agree with him.172 Most of September 13th was spent in digging out Corner Camp which they left at 5 p.m., intending to travel back to Hut Point without stopping except for meals. They marched all through that night with two halts for meals and arrived at Hut Point at 3 p.m. on September 14, having covered a distance of 34.6 statute miles. They reached Cape Evans the following day after an absence of 6½ days.173

During this journey Forde got his hand badly frostbitten which necessitated his return in the Terra Nova in March 1912. He owed a good deal to the skilful treatment Atkinson gave it.

Wilson was still looking grey and drawn some days, and I was not too fit, but Bowers was indefatigable. Soon after we got in from Cape Crozier he heard that Scott was going over to the Western Mountains: somehow or other he persuaded Scott to take him, and they started with Seaman Evans and Simpson on September 15 on what Scott calls “a remarkably pleasant and instructive little spring journey,”174 and what Bowers called a jolly picnic.

This picnic started from the hut in a −40° temperature, dragging 180 lbs. per man, mainly composed of stores for the geological party of the summer. They penetrated as far north as Dunlop Island and turned back from there on September 24, reaching Cape Evans on September 29, marching twenty-one miles (statute) into a blizzard wind with occasional storms of drift and a temperature of −16°: and they marched a little too long; for a storm of drift came against them and they had to camp. It is never very easy pitching a tent on sea-ice because there is not very much snow on the ice: on this occasion it was only after they had detached the inner tent, which was fastened to the bamboos, that they could hold the bamboos, and then it was only inch by inch that they got the outer cover on. At 9 p.m. the drift took off though the wind was as strong as ever, and they decided to make for Cape Evans. They arrived at 1:15 a.m. after one of the most strenuous days which Scott could remember: and that meant a good deal. Simpson’s face was a sight! During his absence Griffith Taylor became meteorologist-in-chief. He was a greedy scientist, and he also wielded a fluent pen. Consequently his output during the year and a half which he spent with us was large, and ranged from the results of the two excellent scientific journeys which he led in the Western Mountains, to this work during the latter half of September. He was a most valued contributor to The South Polar Times, and his prose and poetry both had a bite which was never equalled by any other of our amateur journalists. When his pen was still, his tongue wagged, and the arguments he led were legion. The hut was a merrier place for his presence. When the weather was good he might be seen striding over the rocks with a complete disregard of the effect on his clothes: he wore through a pair of boots quicker than anybody I have ever known, and his socks had to be mended with