BEYOND ALL FORMER FOOTSTEPS
On November 18 I imagined that we had reached the windless area of the
Pole, for the Barrier was a dead, smooth, white plain, weird beyond
description, and, having no land in sight, we felt tiny specks in the
immensity around us. It seemed as though we were in some other world,
and yet the things that concerned us most were such trifles as split
lips and big appetites.
Already the daily meals were all too short, and we wondered what it
would be like when we were really hungry. However, we were moving on at
a rate of about fifteen miles a day, and every night that we camped we
felt that another long step towards our desire had been made.
Soon I discovered that I was wrong in thinking that we had reached the
windless area, for all the sastrugi began to point due south, but the
whole place and conditions were so unlike anything else in the world
of our experience, that it was extremely difficult to make correct
forecasts as to what we should next encounter.
At one moment I thought of Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner": "Alone,
alone; all, all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea"; and then, when the
mazy clouds sprung silently up and, not followed by any wind, drifted
quickly across our zenith, the only word to describe my feeling is
uncanny.
It was as though we were truly at the world's end, and were bursting in
on the birthplace of the clouds and the nesting-home of the four winds,
and we could not suppress a feeling that we mortals were being watched
with a jealous eye by the forces of nature.
Still, in spite of these sensations, which every one who goes out into
the intensely lone places of the world must experience, we were more
interested in such things as heavy going and soft surfaces than in
anything else, for the surface was all-important to us and played the
leading part in our day's work.
On November 20 we met with a terribly soft surface--so bad, in fact,
that it sounded the death-knell of poor old Chinaman, who was no longer
able to keep up with the others; and so we had to shoot him on the
following day.
Let me say again that the killing of the ponies was not pleasant work,
and that our only satisfaction was in knowing that they were well fed
up to the last, and had suffered no pain. When we had to kill a pony
we threw up a snow-mound to leeward of the camp, and took the animal
behind this out of sight of the others.
Of necessity we had to eat the meat, and as within a very short time
after killing the carcase was frozen solid, we always tried to cut the
meat into small pieces before this occurred.
On the same day that saw the death of Chinaman we made our second
depot, and left there 80 lb. of pony meat, one tin of biscuits weighing
27 lb., some sugar, and one tin of oil to see us back to Depot A.
With three ponies dragging 500 lb. each we left our depot, with its
black flag flying on the bamboo lashed to a discarded, sledge, and were
soon in new land to the south--land never before seen by human eyes.
The land consisted of great snow-clad heights rising beyond Mount
Longstaff, and also far inland to the north of Mount Markham. We found
that our latitude was 81° 8′ south.
The weather still remained splendid for marching, with a cool breeze
from the south and the sun slightly hidden, but our enjoyment of the
glorious view of peaks new to human eyes was marred by Wild being
temporarily unwell, and by Adams suffering badly from toothache. Our
first attempt to pull out this tooth merely resulted in the tooth
breaking, but at a second attempt Marshall succeeded in getting it out,
an achievement--under the conditions--as creditable to the one as it
was welcome to the other.
Steady progress was made until November 26, which is a day which we
travellers at least shall remember, for on it we passed the "farthest
south" previously reached by man. On this night we reached latitude 82°
18 south, and our "farthest south" in the march with Captain Scott was
82° 16½′.
As each hour passed on this memorable day we found new interest to the
west where the land lies, for we opened out Shackleton Inlet, and up
the inlet a great chain of mountains, and far into the west still more
peaks. To the west of Cape Wilson another chain of peaks about 10,000
ft. high appeared, and to the south-south-east new mountains were
continually coming into view. It falls to the lot of few men to see
land not previously looked upon by human eyes, and it was with feelings
of keen curiosity and awe (mingled in my case with a fervent hope that
no land would block our path) that we watched the new mountains rise
from the great unknown that lay before us.
No man of us could even guess what wonders might be revealed to us in
our march south, and our imaginations took wings until a stumble in the
snow or the sharp pangs of hunger brought back our attention to the
needs of the immediate present.
Our anxiety, however, to learn what lay before us was as keen as it
could be, and the long days of marching over the Barrier surface
were saved from monotony by the continued appearance of land to the
south-east. As we marched on and new mountains kept on rising, we were
concerned to notice that they trended more and more to the eastward,
for that meant that we must alter our course from nearly due south.
Nevertheless, we hoped that when we reached them some strait might be
found which would enable us to go right through them and on south.
Really, however, patience was of more use to us than speculation, for,
come what might, we meant to push on until our limit of strength was
reached.
By November 28 we had reached a truly awful surface, and poor Grisi,
who had been smitten with snow-blindness, had to be shot in the
evening. Having made Depot C. and left one week's provisions and oil
to carry us back to Depot B, we went on the next morning with 1200
lb. weight, which we decided to pull with the ponies, but we quickly
discovered that the ponies would not pull when we did, so we had to
untoggle our harness.
The whole country seemed to be made up of range upon range of
mountains, but the surface over which we were going was so bad that the
ponies sank in right up to their bellies, and we had to pull with might
and main to get the sledges to move.
By evening the ponies were nearly played out, especially old Quan,
who was suffering, not from the weight of the sledge, but from the
effort of lifting his feet and limbs through the soft snow, and on the
following days we had practically to pull his sledge.
The time had come for him to go, and I am sure that we all felt losing
him and I was especially sorry, as he had been my special pony for
several months. In spite of all his annoying tricks, his immense
intelligence made him a general favourite.