THE RETURN MARCH
Our homeward marches are a tale of sufferings from hunger and
dysentery, of struggles against blizzards and crevasses and bad
surfaces. One desire drove us on from depot to depot, and that was our
supreme craving for food.
All of us had tragic dreams of getting food to eat, but rarely did
we have the satisfaction of dreaming that we were actually eating. I
did, however, once have a dream that I was eating bread and butter.
Conscience is said to make men cowardly, and I am sure that it is as
true to say that hunger makes them very peevish and irritable. We
looked at each other as we ate our scanty meals, and felt a distinct
grievance if one man managed to make his ration last longer than the
rest of us. Sometimes we did our best to save a bit of biscuit for the
next meal, but the problem whether it was better to eat the food at
once or to keep a fragment to nibble afterwards was never solved.
At the start circumstances may be said to have favoured us, for we
picked up the depot which we had ventured to leave on the great white
plain, and the wind was so strongly behind that we were able to put the
sail on the sledge.
In five days we had knocked off some eighty-six geographical miles of
those which separated us from our home, and as we were left with only
six days' biscuit on short ration and had to go 120 more miles before
we reached our next depot, we decided to cut down our food by another
biscuit.
A following wind continued to help us, and the sail was of such
assistance that on one day we made a record of twenty-six and a half
miles, and beat it on the next by doing twenty-nine miles.
But although to beat records is pleasant under any circumstances, my
own pleasure was rather diminished by the facts that my heels were
frost-bitten and cracked, and that there were also cracks under some of
my toes.
We had, however, struggled on until we were within eight and a half
miles of our depot, though had we been hindered instead of helped by
the strong blizzard wind, it is no exaggeration to say that our chance
of escaping starvation would have been inexpressibly small.
On the 20th we reached our depot at 12.30 P.M. with sore and aching
bodies, and after a struggle against countless difficulties. For two
hours we descended a snow-slope, with heavy sastrugi, and then we
struck half a mile of badly crevassed _névé_. After that we got on to
blue slippery ice, where we could obtain no foothold, and to add to the
discomfort and danger of the situation, a gale was blowing which swept
the sledge sideways and knocked us off our feet.
All of us had heavy falls, and I had two very heavy ones which shook
me severely. On several occasions one or more of us lost our footing
and were swept by the wind down the ice-slope, only with the greatest
difficulty getting back to our sledge and companions.
Bad, however, as that day was, and perilous as was our position, we had
said a glad farewell to that awful plateau, and were on our way down
the glacier.
On the next day I harnessed up for a while, but so bruised and battered
was I by my falls that I soon had to give up pulling and to content
myself by walking by the sledge. Fortunately we had a fair wind and a
downhill course, so my inability to pull was not an important matter.
The 24th saw us with only two days' food left and one day's biscuit
on much reduced ration, and we had to cover forty miles of crevasses
before we could reach our next depot. Crevassed ice still added
terribly to our troubles, but though weak I had almost recovered from
my falls.
[Illustration: Farthest South, January 9, 1909. (_See page 146_)]
Continually we seemed to be fighting for the same thing, to struggle
on from one depot to the next to save ourselves from starvation. A
lunch of a cup of tea, two biscuits, and two spoonsful of cheese does
not make one exactly buoyant to attack the march of the afternoon, but
by the 25th we were reduced to this, and at night the food, with the
exception of one meal, was completely gone.
No biscuit was left, and all we had to sustain us was cocoa, tea, salt
and pepper, and very little of these. On that night we were very tired
indeed, and we knew that it was absolutely necessary for us to reach
our depot on the following day. By 7 A.M. on the 26th we came to the
end of all our provisions except a little tea and cocoa, and that day
and the following one can never be erased from our memories, for they
were the hardest and the most trying that any of us had ever spent in
our lives.
From 7 A.M. on the 26th till 2 P.M. on the 27th we did sixteen
miles over the worst surfaces and most dangerous crevasses we had
encountered, only stopping for tea and cocoa till they were finished,
and marching twenty hours at a stretch through snow 10 to 18 in. thick
as a rule, with sometimes 2½ ft. of it. Often and often we fell into
hidden crevasses, and were only saved by each other and by our harness.
No words of mine could bring before you the mental and physical
strain of those forty-eight hours. I will only say that had not an
all-merciful Providence guided our steps we could never have arrived
safely at the depot.
When we started at 7 A.M. on the 26th we had no biscuit left, and with
only one pannikin of hoosh, mostly pony-maize, and one of tea, we
marched till noon. Then we had another pannikin of tea and one ounce
of chocolate and marched till 4.45 P.M. Having no food, we then had
another pannikin of tea and marched until 10 P.M., when we had one
small pannikin of cocoa. On again after that until 2 A.M., when we were
utterly played out and slept until 8 A.M. Then we had a pannikin of
cocoa and marched until 1 P.M., when we camped about half a mile from
our depot.
Both Adams and Wild had fallen exhausted in their harness, but had
recovered and gone on again. Marshall went on to the depot for food,
and at 2 P.M. we got the meal we so desperately needed. And after this
very near call we turned in and slept, thankful indeed to have escaped
so far with our lives.