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

arranged, to be sent up by us at Hut Point if Campbell arrived: signals had also been arranged between Hut Point and Cape Evans in view of certain events. We did not have, but I think we ought to have had some form of portable heliograph for communications between Hut Point and Cape Evans when the sun was up and some kind of lamp signal apparatus to use during the winter.

They started at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 17. The sun was now only just peeping over the northern horizon at midday, and would disappear entirely in six more days, though of course there was a long twilight as yet. For fresh men on old sea-ice it would not have been an easy venture: for worn-out men on a coast where the ice was probably freezing and blowing out at odd times it was very brave.

They had hard pulling their first two days, and the minimum temperature for the corresponding nights was −43° and −45°. Consequently they soon began to be iced up. On the other hand they found old sea-ice and made good some 25 miles, camping on the evening of the 18th about four miles from the Eskers. Next morning they had to venture upon newly frozen ice, and a blizzard wind was blowing. They crossed the four miles from their night camp to the Eskers, glad enough to reach land the other side without the ice going to sea with them. They then turned towards the Butter Point Depot, but were compelled to camp owing to the blizzard which came on with full force. The rise in temperature to zero caused a general thaw of sleeping-bags and clothing which dried but little when the sun had no power. On the following morning they reached the Butter Point Depot, which they found with difficulty, for there was no flag standing. Even as they struck their camp they saw the ice to the north of them breaking up and going out to sea. There was nothing to do but to turn back, for neither could they go north to Campbell nor could Campbell come south to them. Wright now told Atkinson how much he had been opposed to this journey all along: “he had come on this trip fully believing that there was every possibility of the party being lost, but had never demurred and never offered a contrary opinion, and one cannot be thankful enough to such men.”277 They made up the Butter Point Depot, marked it as well as they could in case Campbell should arrive there, and left two weeks’ provisions for him. They could do no more.

They got back to the Eskers that same day and anxiously awaited the twilight of the morning to reveal the state of the new sea-ice which they had crossed on their outward journey. To their joy some of it remained and they started to do the four miles between them and the old sea-ice. For two miles they ran with the sail set: then they had a hard pull, and some Emperor penguins whom they could see led them to suppose that there was open water ahead. But they got through all right, and did ten miles for the day. On Monday 22, “blizzard in morning, so started late, and made for end of Pinnacled Ice. We found our little bay of sea-ice all gone out. Luckily there was a sort of ice-foot around the Pinnacled Ice and we completed seven miles and got through.”278

Tuesday, April 23:

“Atkinson and his party got in about 7 p.m. after a long pull all day in very bad weather. They are just in the state of a party which has been out on a very cold spring journey: clothes and sleeping-bags very wet, sweaters, pyjama coats and so forth full of snow. Atkinson looks quite done up, his cheeks are fallen in and his throat shows thin. Wright is also a good deal done up, and the whole party has evidently had little sleep. They have had a difficult and dangerous trip, and it is a good thing they are in, and they are fortunate to have had no mishaps, for the sea-ice is constantly going out over there, and when they were on it they never knew that they might not find themselves cut off from the shore. Big leads were constantly opening, even in ice over a foot thick and with little wind. But even if the ice had been in I do not believe that they could have gone many days.”279

That same day the sun appeared for the last time for four months.

April 28 seemed to be a quite good day when we woke, and Wright, Keohane and Gran started back for Cape Evans before 10 a.m. We could then see the outline of Inaccessible Island, and the ice in the Sound looked fairly firm. So they determined to go by the way of the sea-ice under Castle Rock instead of going along the Peninsula to the Hutton Cliffs. Soon after they started it came up thick, and by 11:30 it was blowing a mild blizzard with a low temperature. We felt considerable anxiety, especially when a full blizzard set in with a temperature down to −31°, and we could not see how the ice was standing it. Two days later it cleared, and that night a flare was lit at Cape Evans at a prearranged time, by which signal we knew that they had arrived safely. We heard afterwards that when it came up thick they decided to follow the land which was the only thing that they could see. They soon found that the ice was not nearly so good as was supposed: there were open pools of water, and some of the ice was moving up and down with their weight as they crossed it: Gran put his foot in. Then Wright went ahead with the Alpine rope, the