STRUGGLING BACK
At last we were on the Barrier again, and with six days' food and only
fifty miles between us and our next supply I thought that grave danger
was behind us. But the man who congratulates himself that anxieties
and perils are over, before he has reached the very end of his polar
exploration work is wasting his time.
In our case Wild developed dysentery, the cause of which we could only
ascribe to the horse-meat; while just before we left the glacier I
broke through some soft snow and plunged into a hidden crevasse. The
harness jerked up under my heart, and it seemed as though the glacier
were saying, "There is the last touch for you; don't you come up here
again!"
Certainly we were as tired of that glacier as it apparently was of us,
and our joy at leaving it was tremendous; for although the Barrier gave
us a most unfriendly greeting, we knew that a great many dangers were
over, and thought that nothing except blizzards and thick weather were
to be feared.
The Barrier, however, did not mean to be beaten by the glacier in
the way of treating us harshly, for during our first day on it we
were attacked by a wind which froze solidly all our wet clothes, and
five minutes after the wind had sprung up we were struck by a furious
blizzard of snow and heavy drift. Under the circumstances we had to
pitch our camp, and He in our bags, patching our worn-out clothes--a
rather tedious, if useful, pursuit when one was literally aching to go
on.
During the following days there was a variety in our misfortunes--a
variety, indeed, which was so terribly weakening that by the beginning
of February our outlook had become more serious than it had ever been.
Dysentery had attacked all of us acutely; but if there was a variety
in our troubles, there was none in our food, for we had only four
miserably thin biscuits a day to eke out our horse-meat.
On February 2 we reached our next depot, and started on the following
day with a new sledge and 150 lb. more weight. But on that day all of
us were suffering from dysentery, and Wild was very bad indeed.
On the 4th I wrote in my diary, "Cannot write more. All down with acute
dysentery; terrible day. No march possible; outlook serious. Fine
weather."
It gives me joy now to think that, anxious and spent as we were,
trusting indeed to God to pull us through, but too weary and weak to be
very hopeful or to care very much, we still hung on to the geological
specimens we had collected.
By the 6th we were all better, but we were terribly hungry, and six
biscuits per day and one pannikin of horse-meat each meal did nothing
to enable us to regain our strength. Indeed, my fear was that this
incessant hunger would weaken us so much that our return would never be
accomplished.
[Illustration: The Camp under the Granite Pillar, half a mile from the
Lower Glacier Depot, where the Party camped on January 27 (_See page
151_)]
On the 7th Adams and Marshall were again attacked by dysentery; and,
though Wild and I were free of it, all of us were pitiably weak. Still
we struggled on, starving for food, and talking about it all the time
as we advanced slowly towards the north.
The mounds which we had laid on our way out continued to guide us on
our return, and were a great comfort, but all our thoughts and our
conversation were about food. Wind and weather helped us through that
desperate time, or again in our weakened and starving condition we
could never have hoped to reach our next depot.
Assisted, however, as we were, we reached the depot on February 13
without a single particle of food left. There we found poor old
Chinaman's liver, and thought it a dish that kings might envy. We
looked round for any spare bits of meat, and while I was digging in
the snow I came across some hard red stuff, which turned out to be
Chinaman's blood frozen into a solid core. We dug it up, and in such
straits were we that we found it a most welcome addition to our food.
When boiled up, it seemed to us like beef-tea.
Truly I was in luck in those days, for the fifteenth of February was
my birthday, and I was given a present of a cigarette made out of pipe
tobacco and some paper we had with us. It tasted absolutely delicious.
Those, however, were glad moments in a most distressing time, for
on the day following my smoke all of us were again so appallingly
hungry, and consequently so weak, that even to lift our almost empty
provision-bag was an effort.
When we broke camp in the morning we pulled the tent off the poles
and took it down before we moved the things inside, for the effort of
lifting anything through the doorway was too much for us. At night we
sometimes had to lift our legs one at a time with both hands in getting
them into the tent, and after we had stiffened from the day's march it
seemed almost impossible to lift our feet without assistance.
On the 17th we had to march in a blinding blizzard, with 42° of frost,
but mercifully the wind was behind us; and although the sledge with the
sail up sometimes overran us and sometimes, getting into a patch of
soft snow, brought us up with a jerk, we were thankful that we had not
to face such a wind. The jerks, however, were very painful; for when we
were brought up suddenly, the harness round our weakened stomachs hurt
us very much indeed.
All of us had tragic dreams of getting food to eat, and with four men
as hungry as we were, I can assure you that it saves much envy if all
of them finish their meal at precisely the same moment. The man in our
party who managed to make his hoosh last longer than the rest of us was
not for the time being at all a popular man.
On the 18th we sighted Mount Discovery, and it seemed to be a
connecting link between us and our winter quarters. Its big, bluff form
showed out in the north-west, and we felt that this same mountain might
at the very moment be drawing the eyes of our own people. It looked
like a reminder that there was still a place called "home," and helped
to cheer us on our painful way.
Mount Erebus was sighted on the following morning, and if we had not
come to the end of our supplies again, except for some scraps of meat
scraped off the bones of Grisi after they had been lying on the snow
and in the sun for months, all would have been well. To eat these
however, was too great a risk until we were faced with absolute and
complete starvation, and on the following day we hoped to reach Depot A.
Calls to breakfast had long since been things of the past. The cook of
the day no longer said, "Come on boys; good hoosh," for no good hoosh
was to be had and in less time than it has taken me to write this out
food was finished, and then our hopes and thought lay wholly in the
direction of the next feed, so called from force of habit.
On the 20th we were impeded by such a bad light that we could only see
a little way; but by 4 P.M. we reached Depot A, at which was the tin
of jam that we had originally intended to eat on Christmas Day--and
never did jam taste more delightful! Our depoted tobacco and cigarettes
were also there, and apart from the intense enjoyment of a good smoke,
I felt sure that tobacco would make up for the shortage of food until
we reached the Bluff depot. This last depot was the one which I had
told Joyce to lay out, and which was the one ray of hope in front of us
during these days of hunger and disease.
At any rate, we had to stake upon finding provisions at the Bluff, for
we had not food enough to carry us back to the ship. In fact, if we did
not find it we were lost men Each time we took in another hole in our
belts we said that everything would be all right as soon as the Bluff
was reached, and so eager were we to reach the good things in store for
us that on the 21st we struggled on through a blizzard with as many as
67° of frost.
[Illustration: Shackleton standing by the broken Southern Sledge, which
was replaced by another at the Grisi Depot]
In ordinary polar work no one would think of travelling in such
weather, but our need was extreme and we had to keep on going. Food
lay ahead and death stalked us from behind. We were so thin that our
bones ached as we lay on the hard snow in our sleeping-bags. Was it to
be wondered at that, blizzard or no blizzard, we were determined to
struggle forward until we dropped?
And on the 22nd we had a splendid day, and came across the tracks of
men with dogs, which assured us that the depot had been laid all right.
Soon afterwards we passed their noon camp, and as tins were lying round
which had different brands from those of the original stores, we were
certain also that the ship had returned.
After carefully searching the ground for unconsidered trifles, we
found three small bits of chocolate and a tiny bit of biscuit, and we
"turned backs" for them. I was unlucky enough to get the biscuit, and
a curious and unreasoning anger took possession of me for a moment at
my bad luck. Nothing could show more strikingly how primitive we had
become, and how much the question of even a morsel of food affected our
judgment.
However, we were near to the Bluff, but though we felt certain that
food was going to be there in plenty, we also were occasionally beset
by the thought that if by some chance it was not, then all chance of
our safety was at an end.