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

ice to the north seems to have gone out: at any rate our narrow strip along the front, which is so valuable to us, will probably be permanent now.”

“Monday, June 10. A most turbulent day. It is very hard to settle down to do anything, read or write, with such a turmoil outside, the hut shaking until we begin to wonder how long it will stand such winds. Most of the time the wind is averaging about sixty miles an hour, but the gusts are far greater, and at times it seems that something must go. Just before lunch I was racking my brains to write an Editorial for the South Polar Times, and had congratulated ourselves on having the sea-ice which is still in North Bay. As we were having lunch Nelson came in and said, ‘The thermometers have gone!’ All the ice in North Bay has gone. The part immediately next to the shore, which has now been in so long, and which was over two feet thick, we had considered sure to stay. On it has gone out the North Bay thermometer screen with its instruments, which was placed 400 yards out, the fish-trap, some shovels and a sledge with a crowbar. The gusts were exceptionally strong at lunch, and the ice must have gone out very quickly. There was no sign of it afterwards, though it was not drifting much and we could see some distance. To lose this ice in North Bay is a great disappointment, for it means so much to us here whether we have ice or water at our doors. We are now pretty well confined to the cape both for our own exercise and that of the mules, and in the dark it is very rough walking. But if the ice in South Bay were to follow, it would be a calamity, cutting us off entirely from the south and all sledging next year. Let us hope we shall be spared this.”

This blizzard lasted for eight days, up till then the longest blizzard we had experienced: “It died as it had lived, blowing hard to the last, averaging 68 miles an hour from the south, and then 56 miles an hour from the north, finally back to the south, and so to calm. To sit here with no noise of wind whistling in the ventilator, calm and starlight outside, and North Bay freezing over once more, is a very great relief.”280

It is noteworthy that this clearance of the ice, as also that in the beginning of May, coincided roughly with the maximum declination of the moon, and therefore with a run of spring tides.

It would be tedious to give any detailed account of the winds and drift which followed, night and day. There were few days which did not produce their blizzard, but in contrast the hours of bright starlight were very beautiful.

“Walking home over the cape in the darkness this afternoon I saw an eruption of Erebus which, compared with anything we have seen here before, was very big. It looked as though a great mass of flame shot up some thousands of feet into the air, and, as suddenly as it rose, fell again, rising again to about half the height, and then disappearing. There was then a great column of steam rising from the crater, and probably, so Debenham asserts, it was not a flame which appeared, but the reflection from a big bubble breaking in the crater. Afterwards the smoke cloud stretched away southwards, and we could not see the end of it.”281

Blizzard followed blizzard, and at the beginning of July we had four days which were the thickest I have ever seen. Generally when you go out into a blizzard the drift is blown from your face and clothes, and though you cannot see your stretched-out hand, especially on a dark winter day, the wind prevents you being smothered. The wind also prevents the land, tents, hut and cases from being covered. But during this blizzard the drift drove at you in such blankets of snow, that your person was immediately blotted out, your face covered and your eyes plugged up. Gran lost himself for some time on the hill when taking the 8 a.m. observations, and Wright had difficulty in getting back from the magnetic cave. Men had narrow escapes of losing themselves, though they were but a few feet from the hut.

When this blizzard cleared the camp was buried, and even on unobstructed surfaces the snowdrifts averaged four feet of additional depth. Two enormous drifts ran down to the sea from either end of the hut. I do not think we ever found some of our stores again, but the larger part we carried up to the higher ground behind us where they remained fairly clear. About this time I began to notice large sheets of anchor ice off the end of Cape Evans, that is to say, ice forming and remaining on the bottom of the open sea. Now also the open water was extending round the cape into the South Bay behind us: but it was too dark to get any reliable idea of the distribution of ice in the Sound. We were afraid that we were cut off from Hut Point, but I do not believe that this was the case; though the open water must have stretched many miles to the south in the middle of the Sound. The days when it was clear enough even to potter about outside the hut were exceptional. God was very angry.

“Sunday, July 14. A blizzard during the night, and after breakfast it was drifting a lot. While we were having service some of the men went over the camp to get ice for water. The sea-ice had been blown out of North Bay, and the men supposed that the sea was open, and would look black, but Crean tells me that