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

we were passing the dark brown granite headland of the northern foothills. We were soon made fast to a stretch of some 500 yards of thick sea-ice, upon which the wind had not left a particle of snow, and before us the foothills formed that opening which Campbell had well named Hell’s Gate.

I wish I had seen that igloo: with its black and blubber and beastliness. Those who saw it came back with faces of amazement and admiration. We left a depot at the head of the bay, marked with a bamboo and a flag, and then we turned homewards, counting the weeks, and days, and then the hours. In the early hours of January 27 we left the pack. On January 29 we were off Cape Adare, “head sea, and wind, and fog, very ticklish work groping along hardly seeing the ship’s length. Then it lifts and there is a fair horizon. Everybody pretty seasick, including most of the seamen from Cape Evans. All of us feeling rotten.”364 Very thick that night, and difficult going. At midday (lat. 69° 0′ S.) a partial clearance showed a berg right ahead. By night it was blowing a full gale, and it was not too easy to keep in our bunks. Our object was now to make east in order to allow for the westerlies later on. We passed a very large number of bergs, varied every now and then by growlers. On February 1, latitude 64° 5′ S. and longitude 159° 5′ E., we coasted along one side of a berg which was twenty-one geographical miles long: the only other side of which we got a good view stretched away until lost below the horizon. In latitude 62° 0′ S. and longitude 158° 5′ E. we had “a real bad day: head wind from early morning, and simply crowds of bergs all round. At 8 a.m. we had to wedge in between a berg and a long line of pack before we could find a way through. Then thick fog came down. At 9:45 a.m. I went out of the wardroom door, and almost knocked my head against a great berg which was just not touching the ship on the starboard side. There was a heavy cross-swell, and the sea sounded cold as it dashed against the ice. After crossing the deck it was just possible to see in the fog that there was a great Barrier berg just away on the port side.” We groped round the starboard berg to find others beyond. Our friend on the opposite side was continuous and apparently without end. It was soon clear that we were in a narrow alleyway⁠—between one very large berg and a number of others. It took an hour and a quarter of groping to leave the big berg behind. At 4 p.m., six hours later, we were still just feeling our way along. And we had hopes of being out of the ice in this latitude!

The Terra Nova is a wood barque, built in 1884 by A. Stephen & Sons, Dundee; tonnage 764 gross and 400 net; measuring 7′ × 1′ × 9′; compound engines with two cylinders of 140 nominal horsepower; registered at St. Johns, Newfoundland. She is therefore not by any means small as polar ships go, but Pennell and his men worked her shorthanded, with bergs and growlers all round them, generally with a big sea running and often in darkness or fog. On this occasion we were spared many of the most ordinary dangers. It was summer. Our voyage was an easy one. There was twilight most of the night: there were plenty of men on board, and heaps of coal. Imagine then what kind of time Pennell and his ship’s company had in late autumn, after remaining in the south until only a bare ration of coal was left for steaming, until the sea was freezing round them and the propeller brought up dead as they tried to force their way through it. Pennell was a very sober person in his statements, yet he described the gale through which the Terra Nova passed on her way to New Zealand in March 1912 as seeming to blow the ship from the top of one wave to the top of the next; and the nights were dark, and the bergs were all round them. They never tried to lay a meal in those days, they just ate what they could hold in their hands. He confessed to me that one hour he did begin to wonder what was going to happen next: others told me that he seemed to enjoy every minute of it all.

Owing to press contracts and the necessity of preventing leakage of news the Terra Nova had to remain at sea for twenty-four hours after a cable had been sent to England. Also it was of the first importance that the relatives should be informed of the facts before the newspapers published them.

And so at 2:30 a.m. on February 10 we crept like a phantom ship into the little harbour of Oamaru on the east coast of New Zealand. With what mixed feelings we smelt the old familiar woods and grassy slopes, and saw the shadowy outlines of human homes. With untiring persistence the little lighthouse blinked out the message, “What ship’s that?” “What ship’s that?” They were obviously puzzled and disturbed at getting no answer. A boat was lowered and Pennell and Atkinson were rowed ashore and landed. The seamen had strict orders to answer no questions. After a little the boat returned, and Crean announced: “We was chased, sorr, but they got nothing out of us.”

We put out to sea.

When morning broke we could see the land in the distance⁠—greenness, trees, every now and then a cottage. We began to feel impatient. We unpacked the shore-going clothes with their creases three years old which had been sent out from home, tried them on⁠—and they felt unpleasantly