The South Pole, Roald Amundsen [free children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

On December 29 we went downhill more and more, and it was indeed tough work being a ski-runner. The drivers stood so jauntily by the side of their sledges, letting themselves be carried over the plain at a phenomenal pace. The surface consisted of sastrugi, alternating with smooth stretches like ice. Heaven help me, how we ski-runners had to struggle to keep up! It was all very well for Bjaaland; he had flown faster on even worse ground. But for Hassel and me it was different. I saw Hassel put out, now an arm; now a leg, and make the most desperate efforts to keep on his feet. Fortunately I could not see myself; if I had been able to, I am sure I should have been in fits of laughter. Early that day Mount Helmer Hanssen appeared. The ground now went in great undulations — a thing we had not noticed in the mist when we were going south. So high were these undulations that they suddenly hid the view from us. The first we saw of Mount Hanssen was from the top of one of these big waves; it then looked like the top of a pressure hummock that was just sticking up above the surface. At first we did not understand at all what it was; it was not till the next day that we really grasped it, when the pointed blocks of ice covering the top of the mountain came into view. As I have said, it was only then that we made sure of being on the right course; all the rest of the land that we saw was so entirely strange to us. We recognized absolutely nothing.

On the 30th we passed 87� S., and were thus rapidly nearing the Devil’s Ballroom and Glacier. The next day was brilliantly fine-temperature -2.2� F. — with a good breeze right aft. To our great joy, we got sight of the land around the Butcher’s Shop. It was still a long way off, of course, but was miraged up in the warm, sunny air. We were extraordinarily lucky on our homeward trip; we escaped the Devil’s Ballroom altogether.

On January 1 we ought, according to our reckoning, to reach the Devil’s Glacier, and this held good. We could see it at a great distance; huge hummocks and icewaves towered into the sky. But what astonished us was that between these disturbances and on the far side of them, we seemed to see an even, unbroken plain, entirely unaffected by the broken surface. Mounts Hassel, Wisting, and Bjaaland, lay as we had left them; they were easy to recognize when we came a little nearer to them. Now Mount Helmer Hanssen again towered high into the air; it flashed and sparkled like diamonds as it lay bathed in the rays of the morning sun. We assumed that we had come nearer to this range than when we were going south, and that this was the reason of our finding the ground so changed. When we were going south, it certainly looked impassable between us and the mountains; but who could tell? Perhaps in the middle of all the broken ground that we then saw there was a good even stretch, and that we had now been lucky enough to stumble upon it. But it was once more the atmosphere that deceived us, as we found out on the following day, for instead of being nearer the range we had come farther out from it, and this was the reason of our only getting a little strip of this undesirable glacier.

We had our camp that evening in the middle of a big, filled-up crevasse. We were a trifle anxious as to what kind of surface we should find farther on; that these few hummocks and old crevasses were all the glacier had to offer us this time, was more than we dared to hope. But the 2nd came, and brought — thank God! — no disappointment. With incredible luck we had slipped past all those ugly and dangerous places, and now, before we knew where we were, we found ourselves safe and sound on the plain below the glacier. The weather was not first-rate when we started at seven in the evening. It was fairly thick, and we could only just distinguish the top of Mount Bjaaland. This was bad, as we were now in the neighbourhood of our depot, and would have liked clear weather to find out where it lay; but instead of clearing, as we hoped, it grew thicker and thicker, and when we had gone about six and three-quarter miles, it was so bad that we thought it best to stop and wait for a while. We had all the time been going on the erroneous assumption that we had come too far to the east-that is, too near the mountains — and under the circumstances — in the short gleams that had come from time to time — we had not been able to recognize the ground below the glacier. According to our idea, we were on the east of the depot. The bearings, which had been taken in thick air, and were now to guide us in this heavy mist, gave no result whatever. There was no depot to be seen.

We had just swallowed the grateful warm pemmican when the sun suddenly showed itself. I don’t think the camp was ever broken and the sledges packed in such a short time. From the moment we jumped out of our bags till the sledges were ready, it only took us fifteen minutes, which is incredibly quick. “What on earth is that shining over there through the fog?” The question came from one of the lads. The mist had divided, and was rolling away on both sides; in the western bank something big and white peeped through — along ridge running north and south. Hurrah! it’s Helland Hansen. Can’t possibly be anything else. Our only landmark on the west. We all shouted with joy on meeting this old acquaintance. But in the direction of the depot the fog hung thick. We held a brief consultation, and agreed to let it go, to steer for the Butcher’s and put on the pace. We had food enough, anyhow. No sooner said than done, and we started off. It rapidly cleared, and then, on our way towards Helland Hansen, we found out that we had come, not too far to the east, but too far to the west. But to turn round and begin to search for our depot was not to our liking. Below Mount Helland Hansen we came up on a fairly high ridge. We had now gone our fixed distance, and so halted.

Behind us, in the brightest, clearest weather, lay the glacier, as we had seen it for the first time on our way to the south: break after break, crevasse after crevasse. But in among all this nastiness there ran a white, unbroken line, the very path we had stood and looked at a few weeks back. And directly below that white stripe we knew, as sure as anything could be, that our depot lay. We stood there expressing our annoyance rather forcibly at the depot having escaped us so easily, and talking of how jolly it would have been to have picked up all our depots from the plain we had strewed them over. Dead tired as I felt that evening, I had not the least desire to go back the fifteen miles that separated us from it. “If anybody would like to make the trip, he shall have many thanks.” They all wanted to make it — all as one man. There was no lack of volunteers in that company. I chose Hanssen and Bjaaland. They took nearly everything off the sledge, and went away with it empty.

It was then five in the morning. At three in the afternoon they came back to the tent, Bjaaland running in front, Hanssen driving the sedge. That was a notable feat, both for men and dogs. Hanssen, Bjaaland, and that team had covered about fifty miles that day, at an average rate of three to three and a half miles an hour. They had found the depot without much search. Their greatest difficulty had been in the undulating surface; for long stretches at a time they were in the hollows between the waves, which shut in their view entirely. Ridge succeeded ridge, endlessly. We had taken care that everything was ready for their return — above all great quantities of water. Water, water was the first thing, and generally the last, that was in request. When their thirst was a little quenched, great interest was shown in the pemmican. While these two were being well looked after, the depot they had brought in was divided between the two sledges, and in a short time all was ready for our departure. Meanwhile, the weather had been getting finer and finer, and before us lay the mountains, sharp and clear. We thought we recognized Fridtjof Nansen and Don Pedro Christophersen, and took good bearings of them in case the fog should return. With most of us the ideas of day and night began to get rather mixed. “Six o’clock,”

someone would answer, when asked the time. “Yes, in the morning,”

remarks the other. “No; what are you talking about?” answers the first one again; “it’s evening, of course.” The date was hopeless; it was a good thing if we remembered the year. Only when writing in our diaries and observation books did we come across such things as dates; while at work we had not the remotest idea of them.

Splendid weather it was when we turned out on the morning of January 3. We had now agreed to go as it suited us, and take no notice of day or night; for some time past we had all been sick of the long hours of rest, and wanted to break them up at any price. As I have said, the weather could not have been finer brilliantly clear and a dead calm. The temperature of -2.2� F. felt altogether like summer in this bright, still air. Before we began our march all unnecessary clothes were taken off and put on the sledges. It almost looked as if everything would be considered superfluous, and the costume in which we finally started would no doubt have been regarded as somewhat unseemly in our latitudes. We smiled and congratulated ourselves that at present no ladies had reached the Antarctic regions, or they might have objected to our extremely comfortable and serviceable costume. The high land now stood out still more sharply. It was very interesting to see in these conditions the country we had gone through on, the southward trip in the thickest blizzard. We had then been going along the foot of this immense mountain chain without a suspicion of how near we were to it, or how colossal it was. The ground was fortunately quite undisturbed in this part. I say fortunately, as Heaven knows what would have happened to us if we had been obliged to cross a crevassed surface in such weather as we then had. Perhaps we should have managed it — perhaps not.

The journey before us was a stiff one, as the Butcher’s lay 2,680

feet higher than the place where we were. We had been expecting to stumble upon one of our beacons before long, but this did not happen until we had gone twelve and a half miles. Then one of them suddenly came in sight, and was greeted with joy. We knew well enough that we were on the right track, but an old acquaintance like this was very welcome all the same. The sun had evidently been at work up here