I hate to butt in where I may not be wanted, but if the remainder of my
darling's story is to be understood I must say what was happening in the
meantime to me.
God knows there was never a day on which I did not think of my dear one
at home, wondering what was happening to her, and whether a certain dark
fact which always lay at the back of my mind as a possibility was
actually coming to pass.
But she would be brave--I know that quite well--and I saw plainly that,
if I had to get through the stiff job that was before me, I must put my
shadowy fears away and think only of the dangers I was sure about.
The first of these was that she might suppose our ship was lost, so as
soon as we had set up on old Erebus the wooden lattice towers which
contained our long-distance electric apparatus, I tried to send her that
first message from the Antarctic which was to say we had not been
shipwrecked.
It was a thrilling moment. Exactly at the stroke of midnight on January
21, while the midnight sun was shining with its dull sullen glow, the
whole of our company having gathered round, the wireless man prepared to
despatch my message.
As we were not sure of our machinery I had drawn up the words to suit
any place into which they might fall if they missed their intended
destination:
"South Pole Expedition safe. All well. Send greetings to dear ones at
home."
For some forty seconds the sparks crackled out their snappy signals into
the crisp night air, and then the settled calm returned, and we stood in
breathless silence like beings on the edge of a world waiting for the
answer to come as from another planet.
It came. After a few minutes we heard from our magnetic detector the
faint sound of the S signals, and then we broke into a great cheer. It
was not much, but it was enough; and while our scientific staff were
congratulating themselves that electric-wave telegraphy was not
inhibited by long distance, or by the earth's curvature over an arc of a
great circle, I was thinking of my dear one--that one way or another my
message would reach her and she would be relieved.
Then in splendid health and spirits--dogs, ponies, and men all A1--we
started on our journey, making a bee-line for the Pole.
Owing to the heavy weights we had to transport our progress was slow,
much slower than we had expected; and though the going was fair and we
kept a steady pace, travelling a good deal by night, it was not until
the end of March that we reached Mount Darwin, which I had fixed on for
the second of our electric power stations.
By this time winter was approaching, the nights were beginning to be
dark and cold, and the altitude (8000 ft.) was telling on some of us.
Nevertheless our second installation got finished about the last week in
April, and again we gathered round (not quite such a hearty company as
before) while the wireless man spoke to the operator we had left on
Erebus.
Again the electrical radiations went crackling into space, and again we
gave a cheer when the answer came back--all well and instruments in
perfect order.
Then, late as it was, we began on the last stage of our journey, which
we knew would be a hard one. Three hundred geographical miles in front;
temperature down to minus 40°; the sun several weeks gone, and nothing
before us but thickening twilight, cold winds, snow, the rare aurora and
the frequent moon.
But the worst fact was that our spirits were low, and do what I would to
keep a good heart and cheer up the splendid fellows who had come with
me, I could not help feeling the deepening effect of that sunless gloom.
In spite of this, I broke camp on April 25, and started straight as a
die for the South.
It was a stiff fight over the upper glacier in latitude 85, with its
razor-shaped ice, full of snow-covered crevasses, and three days out two
of our best men fell into one of the worst of them.
I saw the accident from a dozen yards away, and running up I lay on my
stomach and shouted down, but it was a black bottomless gulf and not a
sound or a sign came back to me.
This cast a still deeper gloom on our company, who could not be cheered
up, though I kept telling them we should be on the great plateau soon,
please God, and then we should have a clear road to the Pole.
We were not much better on top though, for the surface was much broken
up, and in that brewing place of the winds there seemed to be nothing
but surging seas of cumulus cloud and rolling waves of snow.
The Polar march was telling on us badly. We were doing no more than
seven miles at a stretch. So to help my shipmates to keep up their
spirits (and perhaps to give a bit of a "heise" to my own) I had to sing
all day long--though my darling is right that I have no more voice than
a corn-crake.
Sometimes I sang "Ramsey Town," because it did not want much music, but
generally "Sally's the gel for me," because it had a rattling chorus.
The men all joined in (scientific experts included), and if the angels
took any heed of us, I think it must have touched them up to look down
on our little company of puny men singing away as we trudged through
that snowy wilderness which makes a man feel so small.
But man can only do his best, and as Father Dan (God bless his old
heart!) used to say, the angels can do no more. We were making middling
hard work of it in the 88th parallel, with a temperature as low as 50
degrees of frost, when a shrieking, blinding blizzard came sweeping down
on us from the south.
I thought it might blow itself out, but it didn't, so we struck camp in
a broad half-circle, building igloos (snow huts) with their backs (like
rain-beaten cattle) to the storm.
There we lay nine days--and it is not worth while now to say how much
some of our men suffered from frozen fingers, and more from falling
spirits.
Sometimes I heard them saying (in voices that were intended to be loud
enough for me to hear) it would have been better to have built winter
quarters on the north of Darwin and settle there until the return of
summer. And at other times I heard them counting the distance to the
Pole--a hundred geographical miles, making twenty days' march at this
season, with the heavy weights we had to carry, and the dwindling of our
dogs and ponies, for we had killed a lot of them for food.
But I would not give in, for I felt that to go back without finishing my
job would break my heart; and one day when old Treacle said, "No use,
guv'nor, let's give it best," I flew at him like a hunted tiger.
All the same I was more than a bit down myself, for there were days when
death was very near, and one night it really broke me up to hear a big
strapping chap saying to the man who shared his two-man sack, "I
shouldn't care a whiff if it wasn't for the wife and the kiddies."
God knows I had my own anchor at home, and sometimes it had a devil of a
tug at me. I fought myself hard, though, and at last in my desire to go
on and my yearning to go back to my dear one, I made an awful proposal,
such as a man does not much like to think of after a crisis is over.
"Shipmates," I said, "it isn't exactly my fault that we are here in the
middle of winter, but here we are, and we must make the best of it. I am
going forward, and those who want to go with me can go. But those who
don't want to go can stay; and so that no one may have it on his
conscience that he has kept his comrades back, whether by weakness or by
will, I have told the doctor to serve out a dose of something to every
man, that he may end it whenever he wants to."
To my surprise that awful proposal was joyfully received; and never so
long as I live shall I forget the sight o' O'Sullivan going round the
broad circle of my shipmates in the blue gloom of that noonday twilight
and handing something to every one of them, while nobody spoke, and
Death seemed to look us in the face.
And now I come to the incident for which I have told this story.
I could not get a wink of sleep that night for thinking of the brave
fellows I had doomed to death by their own hands (for that was what it
came to), because their souls were starving and they were thinking of
home.
My soul was starving too, and whether it was the altitude (now 11,000
ft.) that was getting into my head, and giving me that draught in the
brain which only travellers in frozen regions know, or the Power higher
than Nature which speaks to a man in great solitudes when life is low, I
cannot say, but as God is my witness, I was hearing again the voices of
my dear ones so far away.
Sometimes they were the voices of my old people in Ellan, but more
frequently, and most importunately, it was Mary's voice, calling me by
my name, and crying to me for help as if she were in the shadow of some
threatening danger.
"Martin! Martin! Martin!"
When this idea took clear possession of me--it was about three a.m. and
the hurricane was yowling like a wounded dog--the answering thought came
quick. I must go back. No matter at what cost or sacrifice--I must go
back.
It was in vain I reflected that the trouble which threatened my darling
(whatever it was, and I thought I knew) might be all over before I
reached her side--I must go back.
And even when I reminded myself that I was within twenty days' march of
that last point of my journey which was to be the crown and completion
of it all, I also remembered that my dear one was calling me, and I had
no choice but to obey.
Next morning, in the first light of the dim Antarctic glow, I crept out
of my snow hut to look south with powerful glasses in order to make sure
that there was no reason why I should change my mind.
There was none. Although the snow had ceased the blizzard was blowing a
hundred miles an hour in cutting gusts, so with a bleeding heart (and
yet a hot one) I told Treacle to call rip our company, and when they
stood round me in the shelter of my hut I said:
"Shipmates, I have been thinking things over during the night, and I see
them differently now. Nature is stronger than man, and the nature that
is inside of us sometimes hits us harder than that which is without. I
think it is that way with us here, and I believe there isn't a man of
you who wouldn't go forward with me if he had nobody to think of except
himself. . . . Well, perhaps _I_ have somebody to think of, too, so
we'll stick together, shipmates, and whatever regrets there may be, or
disappointments, or heart-breakings, we'll . . . we'll go back home."
I think it says something for the mettle my men were made of that there
was never a cheer after I said that, for they could see what it cost me
to say it. But by God, there was a shout when I added:
"We've drawn a blank this time, boys, but we'll draw a winner yet, and I
ask you to swear that you'll come back with me next year, please God, to
finish the work we've begun."
Then we gripped hands in that desolate place, and took our solemn oath,
and God knows we meant to keep it.
It did not take long to strike camp, I can tell you. The men were
bustling about like boys and we had nothing to think of now but the
packing of the food and the harnessing of the dogs and ponies, for we
were leaving everything else behind us.
At the last moment before we turned northward I planted the Union Jack
on the highest hummock of snow, and when we were a hundred yards off I
looked back through the gloom and saw it blowing stiffly in the wind.
I don't think I need tell how deeply that sight cut me, but if life has
another such moment coming for me all I have to say is that I hope I may
die before I live to see it--which is Irish, but most damnably true.
That was twelve o'clock noon on the eighth day of June and anybody may
make what he likes of what I say, but as nearly as I can calculate the
difference of time between London and where we were in the 88th latitude
it was the very hour of my dear one's peril.