The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard [free ebooks for android TXT] 📗
- Author: Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Book online «The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard [free ebooks for android TXT] 📗». Author Apsley Cherry-Garrard
We just pulled for all we were worth and did nearly two miles an hour: for two miles a baddish salt surface, then big undulating hard sastrugi and good going. We slept as we walked. We had done eight miles by 4 p.m. and were past Glacier Tongue. We lunched there.
As we began to gather our gear together to pack up for the last time, Bill said quietly, “I want to thank you two for what you have done. I couldn’t have found two better companions—and what is more I never shall.”
I am proud of that.
Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds. But this journey had beggared our language: no words could express its horror.
We trudged on for several more hours and it grew very dark. There was a discussion as to where Cape Evans lay. We rounded it at last: it must have been ten or eleven o’clock, and it was possible that someone might see us as we pulled towards the hut. “Spread out well,” said Bill, “and they will be able to see that there are three men.” But we pulled along the cape, over the tide-crack, up the bank to the very door of the hut without a sound. No noise from the stable, nor the bark of a dog from the snowdrifts above us. We halted and stood there trying to get ourselves and one another out of our frozen harnesses—the usual long job. The door opened—“Good God! here is the Crozier Party,” said a voice, and disappeared.
Thus ended the worst journey in the world.
And now the reader will ask what became of the three penguins’ eggs for which three human lives had been risked three hundred times a day, and three human frames strained to the utmost extremity of human endurance.
Let us leave the Antarctic for a moment and conceive ourselves in the year 1913 in the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. I had written to say that I would bring the eggs at this time. Present, myself, C.-G., the sole survivor of the three, with First or Doorstep Custodian of the Sacred Eggs. I did not take a verbatim report of his welcome; but the spirit of it may be dramatized as follows:
First Custodian. Who are you? What do you want? This ain’t an egg-shop. What call have you to come meddling with our eggs? Do you want me to put the police on to you? Is it the crocodile’s egg you’re after? I don’t know nothing about no eggs. You’d best speak to Mr. Brown: it’s him that varnishes the eggs.
I resort to Mr. Brown, who ushers me into the presence of the Chief Custodian, a man of scientific aspect, with two manners: one, affably courteous, for a Person of Importance (I guess a Naturalist Rothschild at least) with whom he is conversing, and the other, extraordinarily offensive even for an official man of science, for myself.
I announce myself with becoming modesty as the bearer of the penguins’ eggs, and proffer them. The Chief Custodian takes them into custody without a word of thanks, and turns to the Person of Importance to discuss them. I wait. The temperature of my blood rises. The conversation proceeds for what seems to me a considerable period. Suddenly the Chief Custodian notices my presence and seems to resent it.
Chief Custodian. You needn’t wait.
Heroic Explorer. I should like to have a receipt for the eggs, if you please.
Chief Custodian. It is not necessary: it is all right. You needn’t wait.
Heroic Explorer. I should like to have a receipt.
But by this time the Chief Custodian’s attention is again devoted wholly to the Person of Importance. Feeling that to persist in overhearing their conversation would be an indelicacy, the Heroic Explorer politely leaves the room, and establishes himself on a chair in a gloomy passage outside, where he wiles away the time by rehearsing in his imagination how he will tell off the Chief Custodian when the Person of Importance retires. But this the Person of Importance shows no sign of doing, and the Explorer’s thoughts and intentions become darker and darker. As the day wears on, minor officials, passing to and from the Presence, look at him doubtfully and ask his business. The reply is always the same, “I am waiting for a receipt for some penguins’ eggs.” At last it becomes clear from the Explorer’s expression that what he is really waiting for is not to take a receipt but to commit murder. Presumably this is reported to the destined victim: at all events the receipt finally comes; and the Explorer goes his way with it, feeling that he has behaved like a
Comments (0)