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

Atkinson had the ship’s mail, signed by Campbell. “Every incident of the day,” Scott wrote, “pales before the startling contents of the mailbag which Atkinson gave me⁠—a letter from Campbell setting out his doings and the finding of Amundsen established in the Bay of Whales.”

Strongly as Scott tries to word this, it quite fails to convey how he felt, and how we all felt more or less, in spite of the warning conveyed in the telegram from Madeira to Melbourne. For an hour or so we were furiously angry, and were possessed with an insane sense that we must go straight to the Bay of Whales and have it out with Amundsen and his men in some undefined fashion or other there and then. Such a mood could not and did not bear a moment’s reflection; but it was natural enough. We had just paid the first instalment of the heartbreaking labour of making a path to the Pole; and we felt, however unreasonably, that we had earned the first right of way. Our sense of cooperation and solidarity had been wrought up to an extraordinary pitch; and we had so completely forgotten the spirit of competition that its sudden intrusion jarred frightfully. I do not defend our burst of rage⁠—for such it was⁠—I simply record it as an integral human part of my narrative. It passed harmlessly; and Scott’s account proceeds as follows:

“One thing only fixes itself definitely in my mind. The proper, as well as the wiser, course for us is to proceed exactly as though this had not happened. To go forward and do our best for the honour of the country without fear or panic. There is no doubt that Amundsen’s plan is a very serious menace to ours. He has a shorter distance to the Pole by 60 miles⁠—I never thought he could have got so many dogs safely to the ice. His plan of running them seems excellent. But, above and beyond all, he can start his journey early in the season⁠—an impossible condition with ponies.”118

We read that on leaving McMurdo Sound the Terra Nova coasted eastward along the Barrier face, with Campbell and his men who were to be landed on King Edward VII’s Land if possible. She surveyed the face of the Barrier as she went from Cape Crozier to longitude 170° W., whence she shaped a course direct for Cape Colbeck, which Priestley states in his diary “is only 200 feet high according to our measurement and looks uncommonly like common or garden Barrier.”

Here they met heavy pack, and were forced to return without finding any place where the cliff was low enough to allow Campbell and his five men to land. They coasted back, making for an inlet known as Balloon Bight. Priestley tells the story:

“February 1, 1911. Our trip has not been without outcome after all, and all our doubts about wintering here or in South Victoria Land have been settled in a startling fashion. About ten o’clock we steamed into a deep bay in the Barrier which proved to be Shackleton’s Bay of Whales, and our observations in the last expedition [Shackleton’s] have been wonderfully upheld. Our present sights and angles Pennell tells me are almost a duplicate of those that we got. Everyone has always been doubtful about the Bay of Whales we reported, but now the matter has been set at rest finally. There is no doubt now that Balloon Bight and the neighbouring bay marked on the Discovery’s chart have become merged into one, and further, that since that period the resulting bight has broken back considerably more: indeed it seems to have altered a good deal on its western border since our visit to it in 1908. Otherwise it is the same, the same deceptive caves and shadows having from a distance the appearance of rock exposures, the same pressure-ridged cliffs, the same undulations behind, the same expanse of sea-ice and even the same crowds of whales. I hope that before we leave we shall find it possible to survey the bight, but that depends on the weather. It was satisfactory to find all our observations coming right and everybody backing up Shackleton, and I turned in last night feeling quite cheerful and believing that there would be a really good chance of the Eastern Party finding a home on the Barrier here⁠—our last chance of surveying King Edward’s Land.

“However, man proposes but God disposes, and I was waked up by Lillie at one o’clock this morning by the astounding news that there was a ship in the bay at anchor to the sea-ice. All was confusion on board for a few minutes, everybody rushing up on deck with cameras and clothes.

“It was no false alarm, there she was within a few yards of us, and what is more, those of us who had read Nansen’s books recognized the Fram.

“She is rigged with fore and aft sails and as she has petrol engines she has no funnel. Soon afterwards the men forward declared that they sighted a hut on the Barrier, and the more excited declared that there was a party coming out to meet us. Campbell, Levick, and myself were therefore lowered over the side of the ship while she was being made fast, and set off on ski towards the dark spot we could see. This proved to be only an abandoned depot and we returned to the ship, where Campbell, who in his anxiety to be the first to meet them had left us beginners far behind, had opened up conversation with the night watchman.

“He informed us that there were only three men on board and that the remainder of them were settling Amundsen in winter quarters about as far from the depot as the depot was from the ship. Amundsen is coming to visit the Fram