The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard [free ebooks for android TXT] 📗

many others were much the same.

But there is no love lost between the class of men who go out and do such work and the authorities at home who deal with their collections. I remember a conversation in the hut during the last bad winter. Men were arguing fiercely that professionally they lost a lot by being down South, that they fell behindhand in current work, got out of the running and so forth. There is a lot in that. And then the talk went on to the publication of results, and the way in which they would wish them done. A said he wasn’t going to hand over his work to be mucked up by such and such a body at home; B said he wasn’t going to have his buried in museum bookshelves never to be seen again; C said he would jolly well publish his own results in the scientific journals. And the ears of the armchair scientists who might deal with our hard-won specimens and observations should have been warm that night.

At the time I felt a little indignant. It seemed to me that these men ought to think themselves lucky to be down South at all: there were thousands who would have liked to take their place. But now I understand quite a lot more than I did then. Science is a big thing if you can travel a Winter Journey in her cause and not regret it. I am not sure she is not bigger still if you can have dealings with scientists and continue to follow in her path.

VII The Winter Journey

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a Heaven for?

R. Browning, Andrea del Sarto

To me, and to everyone who has remained here the result of this effort is the appeal it makes to our imagination, as one of the most gallant stories in Polar History. That men should wander forth in the depth of a Polar night to face the most dismal cold and the fiercest gales in darkness is something new; that they should have persisted in this effort in spite of every adversity for five full weeks is heroic. It makes a tale for our generation which I hope may not be lost in the telling.

Scott’s Diary, at Cape Evans.

The following list of the Winter Journey sledge weights (for three men) is taken from the reckoning made by Bowers before we started:

Expendible Stores⁠— lbs. lbs. “Antarctic” biscuit 135 3 Cases for same 12 Pemmican 110 Butter 21 Salt 3 Tea 4 Oil 60 Spare parts for primus, and matches 2 Toilet paper 2 Candles 8 Packing 5 Spirit 8 370 Permanent Weights, etc. 2 9 ft. Sledges, 41 lbs. each 82 1 Cooker complete 13 2 Primus filled with oil 8 1 Double tent complete 35 1 Sledging shovel 3.5 3 Reindeer sleeping-bags, 12 lbs. each 36 3 Eiderdown sleeping-bag linings, 4 lbs. each 12 1 Alpine rope 5 1 Bosun’s bag, containing repairing materials, and 1 Bonsa outfit, containing repairing tools 5 3 Personal bags, each containing 15 lbs. spare clothing, etc. 45 Lamp box with knives, steel, etc., for seal and penguin 21 Medical and scientific box 40 2 Ice axes, 3 lbs. each 6 3 Man-harnesses 3 3 Portaging harnesses 3 Cloth for making roof and door for stone igloo 24 Instrument box 7 3 Pairs ski and sticks (discarded afterwards) 33 1 Pickaxe 11 3 Crampons, 2 lbs. 3 oz. each 6.5 2 Bamboos for measuring tide if possible, 14 feet each 4 2 Male bamboos 4 1 Plank to form top of door of igloo 2 1 Bag sennegrass 1 6 Small female bamboo ends and 1 Knife for cutting snow block to make igloo 4 Packing 8 420 790

The “Lamp box” mentioned above contained the following:

1 Lamp for burning blubber.

1 Lamp for burning spirit.

1 Tent candle lamp.

1 Blubber cooker.

1 Blowpipe.

The party of three men set out with a total weight of 757 lbs. to draw, the ski and sticks in the above list being left behind at the last moment.

It was impossible to load the total bulk upon one 12 ft. sledge, and so two 9 ft. sledges were taken, one toggled on behind the other. While this made the packing and handling of the gear much easier, it nearly doubled the friction surface against which the party had to pull.

June 22. Midwinter Night.

A hard night: clear, with a blue sky so deep that it looks black: the stars are steel points: the glaciers burnished silver. The snow rings and thuds to your footfall. The ice is cracking to the falling temperature and the tide crack groans as the water rises. And over all, wave upon wave, fold upon fold, there hangs the curtain of the aurora. As you watch, it fades away, and then quite suddenly a great beam flashes up and rushes to the zenith, an arch of palest green and orange, a tail of flaming gold. Again it falls, fading away into great searchlight beams which rise behind the smoking crater of Mount Erebus. And again the spiritual veil is drawn⁠—

Here at the roaring loom of Time I ply
And weave for God the garment thou seest him by.

Inside the hut are orgies. We are very merry⁠—and indeed why not? The sun turns to come back to us tonight, and such a day comes only once a year.

After dinner we had to make speeches, but instead of making a speech Bowers brought in a wonderful Christmas tree, made of split bamboos and a ski stick, with feathers tied to the end of each branch; candles, sweets, preserved fruits, and the most absurd toys of which Bill was the owner. Titus got three things which pleased him immensely, a sponge, a whistle, and a popgun which went off when he pressed in the butt. For the rest of the evening he went round asking whether you were sweating. “No.” “Yes, you are,” he said, and wiped your face with the sponge. “If you want to please me very much you will fall down when I shoot you,” he said to me, and then he went round shooting everybody. At intervals he blew the whistle.

He danced the Lancers with Anton, and Anton, whose dancing puts that of the Russian Ballet into the shade, continually apologized for not being able to do it well enough. Ponting gave a great lecture with slides which he had made since we arrived, many of which Meares had