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

how far we are from the Lower Glacier Depot, probably 18 to 20 m.: and we have to reduce food again, only one biscuit tonight with a thin hoosh of pemmican. Tomorrow we have to make one day’s food which remains last over the two. The weather became heavily overcast during the afternoon and then began to snow, and though we got in our 4 hours’ march it was with difficulty, and we only made a bit over 5 miles. However, we are nearer the depot tonight.”

“February 16. 12½ m. geog. Got a good start in fair weather after one biscuit and a thin breakfast, and made 7½ m. in the forenoon. Again the weather became overcast and we lunched almost at our old bearing on Kyffin of lunch Dec. 15. All the afternoon the weather became thick and thicker and after 3¼ hours Evans collapsed, sick and giddy, and unable to walk even by the sledge on ski, so we camped. Can see no land at all anywhere, but we must be getting pretty near the Pillar Rock. Evans’ collapse has much to do with the fact that he has never been sick in his life and is now helpless with his hands frostbitten. We had thin meals for lunch and supper.”

“February 17. The weather cleared and we got away for a clear run to the depot and had gone a good part of the way when Evans found his ski shoes coming off. He was allowed to readjust and continue to pull, but it happened again, and then again, so he was told to unhitch, get them right, and follow on and catch us up. He lagged far behind till lunch, and when we camped we had lunch, and then went back for him as he had not come up. He had fallen and had his hands frostbitten, and we then returned for the sledge, and brought it, and fetched him in on it as he was rapidly losing the use of his legs. He was comatose when we got him into the tent, and he died without recovering consciousness that night about 10 p.m. We had a short rest for an hour or two in our bags that night, then had a meal and came on through the pressure ridges about 4 miles farther down and reached our Lower Glacier Depot. Here we camped at last, had a good meal and slept a good night’s rest which we badly needed. Our depot was all right.”339 “A very terrible day.⁠ ⁠… On discussing the symptoms we think he began to get weaker just before we reached the Pole, and that his downward path was accelerated first by the shock of his frostbitten fingers, and later by falls during rough travelling on the glacier, further by his loss of all confidence in himself. Wilson thinks it certain he must have injured his brain by a fall. It is a terrible thing to lose a companion in this way, but calm reflection shows that there could not have been a better ending to the terrible anxieties of the past week. Discussion of the situation at lunch yesterday shows us what a desperate pass we were in with a sick man on our hands at such a distance from home.”340

Where Evans Died⁠—E. A. Wilson XVIII The Polar Journey (Continued)

This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,⁠ ⁠…
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,⁠ ⁠…
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land.

Shakespeare VI Farthest South

Stevenson has written of a traveller whose wife slumbered by his side what time his spirit re-adventured forth in memory of days gone by. He was quite happy about it, and I suppose his travels had been peaceful, for days and nights such as these men spent coming down the Beardmore will give you nightmare after nightmare, and wake you shrieking⁠—years after.

Of course they were shaken and weakened. But the conditions they had faced, and the time they had been out, do not in my opinion account entirely for their weakness nor for Evans’ collapse, which may have had something to do with the fact that he was the biggest, heaviest and most muscular man in the party. I do not believe that this is a life for such men, who are expected to pull their weight and to support and drive a larger machine than their companions, and at the same time to eat no extra food. If, as seems likely, the ration these men were eating was not enough to support the work they were doing, then it is clear that the heaviest man will feel the deficiency sooner and more severely than others who are smaller than he. Evans must have had a most terrible time: I think it is clear from the diaries that he had suffered very greatly without complaint. At home he would have been nursed in bed: here he must march (he was pulling the day he died) until he was crawling on his frostbitten hands and knees in the snow⁠—horrible: most horrible perhaps for those who found him so, and sat in the tent and watched him die. I am told that simple concussion does not kill as suddenly as this: probably some clot had moved in his brain.

For one reason and another they took very nearly as long to come down the glacier with a featherweight sledge as we had taken to go up it with full loads. Seven days’ food were allowed from the Upper to the Lower Glacier Depot. Bowers told me that he thought this was running it fine. But the two supporting parties got through all right, though they both tumbled into the horrible