Chapter VI: Into the South (2)

This species is found only in the far south, and has the peculiarity of nesting during the winter. The term “nesting” may be misleading, for they do not make any nests but lay their egg (only one egg is laid by each bird) upon the snow surface. Both male and female birds take turns in hatching out. They have a small depression on the foot into which the egg is wriggled by means of the beak. They are able to move about carrying the egg, and as Sir Ernest Shackleton used to say, “they act both as a cradle and a perambulator.” When they wish to transfer the egg from one to another they stand belly to belly and indulge in a vast amount of wriggling; but in the process the egg is often dropped on to the ice and has to be wriggled on again from there. Two of the most marked characteristics of penguins are their patience and tenacity of purpose, both of which are extraordinary.

A few days before we entered the cul-de-sac Dell killed the South Georgia pig which was presented to us by Mr. Hansen, of Leith Harbour. It proved excellent eating and a pleasant change from seal meat. The head remained, and as it would make a meal for only one of the messes, we agreed to gamble to decide which should have it. Kerr was deputed to represent us, but lost to the after-mess. Even such small incidents as this attracted an interest just then.

A sounding taken on this day (February 7th) showed 2,356 fathoms in position lat. 67° 40´ S. and 17° 6´ E. long.

At 5.0 A.M. on the following day the ice had shown no signs of opening, so I decided to turn back and look for a more open route to the east or west. We steamed north until noon, when, not caring to expend coal in going away from our objective, I gave orders to reduce steam, and proceeded under sail. The wind was southerly and of moderate strength. I gathered in this way some idea of what ice navigation meant in the days before the introduction of the steam engine. Progress, in spite of favourable winds, was slow, but I was surprised at the effect of a long-continued steady pressure against floes, some of them of quite considerable weight. They gave way slowly before our bows, and the _Quest_ slipped of her own will (for she would not answer her helm) into the cracks between them and slowly wedged her way through.

We were now so deep in the pack that there was no appreciable swell, and the _Quest_ was consequently steady. I continued the operation which we had been compelled to give up before, and swung out the port life-boat, Worsley being a spectator only. This time there was no accident.

Worsley now started to go on the bridge and keep a watch, though of course he was compelled to take things very quietly, at any rate in so far as his movements were concerned. Quiet in other respects his watch certainly was not, for members of it carried on long-continued, and often argumentative, dialogues, usually at the top of their voices. This was especially the case with one of them, and many times I have leapt on deck with a sense of impending danger, wakened by shouting that proved to be the most trivial of remarks.

The weather was fair during the day, with a moderate southerly wind, no sunshine, and occasional snow squalls. At 7.30 P.M. we had made thirty-five miles to the northward. This was all to the bad and a bit disappointing. However, we hoped for a change before long. Seals appeared on the floe in quantity during the day and also a number of emperor penguins standing, as usual, stately and alone.

Killers were about and a large number of birds—Antarctic petrels, Wilson’s petrels, and a few pretty pure white snow petrels.

During the night (February 9th) our luck changed and we were able to make southerly again. Throughout the morning we met loose pack and a number of leads of open water, so that by 12.0 noon we were only eleven miles north of the previous position. We had the same conditions till 4.0 P.M., when we met with dense pack. From the crow’s nest, however, I saw “water sky” to the southward and determined to push on to the utmost ability of the ship. We progressed very slowly and only with the greatest difficulty. It took much hard steaming and consumption of valuable coal for the _Quest_ to make any impression on this heavy floe.

The evening of this day was fine, beautiful and still, the sort that takes hold of one and sends mind and memory wandering far afield. There was not a ripple on the small pools between the floes, in which were numbers of small _euphausiæ_ swimming about. Four or five seals came about the ship and accompanied us, rubbing themselves against the sides and popping their heads out to regard us with large eyes of a beautiful soft brown colour. They were evidently in a playful mood. On the ice seals are sluggish and very helpless, but in the water they are wonderful, and their swimming movements are most graceful as they dart about twisting and turning and occasionally rising to look round.

Killers were about earlier in the day, but no penguins. An ugly-looking sea-leopard put his head out of the water and gazed malignantly over the edge of the floe. In a pool at some distance from the ship I caught sight of a black mass rising and falling, and through my binoculars witnessed what appeared to be a fight between two sea-leopards. One of them leapt continually from the water to a height of some six feet, and the water was churned to a mass of foam. Suddenly it all ceased. What tragedy was enacted on that perfect evening? On such a night, amidst the pure whiteness of one’s surroundings, it was hard to realize that in the struggle for existence the unrelenting laws of Nature must hold.

We passed close alongside a floe with a seal on it. I shot it; Macklin jumped off on to the floe and made fast a line, scarcely taking time to stop we hauled it aboard and proceeded on our way. Looking back I saw the surface of the snow smirched with its blood. So Man passed leaving a red stain; and yet but a few moments before I had been moralizing on “Nature red in tooth and claw.”

Very few birds were about, with the exception of snow petrels, a few Antarctic petrels and a single young Dominican gull.

_Photo: Wilkins_]

_Photo: Wilkins_]

_Photo: Wilkins_]

_Photo: Dr. Macklin_]

We were pushing on, but the prospect at the moment was not promising. From aloft there was nothing to be seen but ice closely packed and stretching as far as the eye could reach in all directions. I distrust fine weather in the pack; it usually means lowered temperature, close ice and little open water.

February 10th opened as a beautiful morning, with bright sunshine. The ice was white and sparkling and the water a deep blue. The air was keen and crisp, and all hands revelled in the improved weather conditions. Less so myself, however, for I feared what was portended. I prefer damp misty weather in the pack, for that means the presence of a considerable amount of open water amongst the ice and better conditions for navigating, in spite of poor visibility.

The number of seals that accompanied us increased to twenty or more. They refused to leave us, though they occasionally took fright and dashed off with a swirl of water. Seen from aloft a school of seals is a wonderful sight. There was evidently something on the ship’s side which had an attraction for them, for they seized the chance of every stop to rise out of the water and nibble at frozen pieces of ice which had formed just above the water-line. The ice on the patent anchors which projected from the hawse holes two or three feet above the surface especially attracted them, and they collected in clusters of five or six to nibble at it.

In the early morning the pack was composed of dense, heavy old floes, much broken up and bearing the remains of pressure ridges through which progress was very slow. At 7.30 A.M. we entered a lead with surface just freezing over, which offered little resistance to the ship. It was literally full of killers, which crossed and recrossed our bows and “blew” all about us. Our seal friends did not accompany us into the lead, for which the presence of the killers was no doubt a good and sufficient reason. The crab-eaters seem to have no fear of them whilst in closely set pack with only small pools of water between the floes, but one rarely sees crab-eaters in larger stretches of water. Occasionally they have been seen in large numbers travelling at high speed. Hurley, the photographer of the last expedition, was able to get a photographic record of them passing close to the ship, the number being so great that the surface of the water was lashed to foam. That they are hunted by the killers is beyond doubt, for one frequently sees them shoot out of water and land with a heavy wallop on a piece of ice, look all round and bump themselves violently along, finally disappearing with a dive into the water again. This differs largely from their ordinary method of landing when they wish to rest. In this case they may be seen first of all rising high out of the water and looking over the edge of the floe, obviously noting its nature, and searching for a shelter from the wind. They land with the same heavy flop, but show none of the excitement when up.

_Photo: Dr. Macklin_]

_Photo: Wilkins_]

On one occasion at my base in Queen Mary’s Land during the Mawson Expedition I was standing on an ice foot with Mr. Harrison, my biologist, when I saw a killer actually attack a seal which, however, escaped and effected a landing on the ice foot. It was bleeding profusely and was in a very exhausted condition. On close examination we found six large wounds, all of which had penetrated the blubber to the flesh, none of them less than three inches deep. At first I was inclined to put the animal out of its misery, but my biologist asked me to let it remain so that we might see whether or not it would recover. It lost an amazing amount of blood, which melted its way into the ice beneath, but on the fourth day it had recovered sufficiently to enter the sea again. Nearly all seals bear the scars of old wounds in vertical strokes down their sides. Wilkins collected a number of skins in which these scars were more extensive than usual, and prepared them for sending back as specimens to the British Museum.

The water in the hold had increased so much by now that it required four hours of hard pumping to reduce. It was hard, monotonous work.

In the afternoon we encountered the first Adelie penguin which we had seen on this expedition. It was standing alone on a flat piece of floe, and at sight of us evinced the most marked surprise, looking at us first with one eye and then the other, and finally started towards us at a run. Its waddling gait resembled that of a fat old white-waistcoated gentleman in a desperate hurry. Many times it fell forward, but, picking itself up, hurried on till, reaching the edge of the floe, it tumbled rather than dived into the water. In a few seconds it shot out, to alight upright upon another floe where it continued the chase, but by this time we were drawing away and he gave it up, uttering a last “Cl-a-a-k,” as much as to say, “Well, I’m jiggered!” Later we saw many more who showed the same interest, some of them taking to the water and coming about the ship or following in our wake.

We entered a broad belt of large flat pieces of one-year-old floe interspersed with thinner new ice which the _Quest_ was able to crack, although it usually required several blows to split it widely enough to let her through.

Following on this we entered a broad lead of open water, but about 10 P.M. encountered very thick and solid floe. Owing to the dim light it was impossible to distinguish rotten mushy ice which we could safely ram from solid pieces which badly jarred the ship. About midnight I lay to till more light should give me a chance to get a better view from the mast head.

We obtained a sounding of 2,163 fathoms in position lat. 68° 3´ S. and 16° 12´ E. long., and as soon as the light improved we set off again and spent the whole of February 11th energetically pushing south. The temperature fell rapidly, reaching 18° F. at midnight. All the open water started freezing over and was covered with a skin of ice which offered little resistance to the ship when she was well under way, but impeded her considerably when in the dense pack she was forced to be continually stopping and restarting again.

As far as the actual weather was concerned the Antarctic can offer nothing better than that which we were experiencing, fine and clear, the air crisp and cold, yet not sufficiently so to be unpleasant. As the sun sloped down to the horizon with the gentle decline it takes in these latitudes, in contrast to the suddenness with which it disappears in the tropics, we had a beautiful long sunset, the sky taking the most wonderful colours, crimson, amber and gold. The snow surface was a lovely pale pink except where each hummock threw a long black shadow. The surface of the newly freezing parts, still and polished, reflected a pale green. Across the vault of the sky were little fleecy rolls of pink cloud, while nearer the horizon were heavier banks of a deep crimson. Stretching away behind in an ever-narrowing ribbon one saw the lane cut by the passage of the ship disturbed only in the foreground by the ripple of the screw. In contrast to the vivid colouring ahead that astern had the black and white effect of a pencil sketch. A perfectly wonderful evening and yet—_timeo Danaos_—I do not like the pack when it smiles. The prospect was not good. I knew that unless we got a rise of temperature things might be bad for us, for it would be quite impossible to forge through the thickening ice, which had the effect of cementing together the heavier floes so that a much more powerful ship than the _Quest_ would have been quite unable to make any impression upon them.

There was one thing I knew I must avoid. The _Quest_ was not suitable for “freezing in.” Her shape was not such as would cause her to rise with lateral pressure, and it was almost certain that should she become involved in any of the heavy disturbances which frequently occur she was not likely to survive. The hazard of a boat journey was not likely to meet with the same fortunate ending that we experienced in the _Endurance_ expedition, where our escape was indeed a miraculous one. Nearly all our special winter equipment was at Cape Town, which was to have been our base of operations. But weighing even more than these factors was another on which one can only briefly touch: in spite of a solid nucleus of old, tried Antarctic men, and others of proved worth in different fields, there was a discordant element in the personnel which I was anxious to adjust before I exposed the party to the trials and vicissitudes of a polar winter.

During the afternoon Worsley took a sounding, finding in lat. 68° 52´ S. and 16° 55´ E. long. a depth of 1,555 fathoms, which showed a shoaling of 608 fathoms in 49 miles of southing. The snapper contained a specimen of grey mud which was handed to the geologist.

I had no rest during the night, for I realized that on the next few hours hung the fate of this effort. Unless the temperature rose and the ice showed signs of loosening it would be necessary to turn back, little though I liked the prospect. I was in the crow’s nest the moment that the dim midnight light began to improve, searching all round the horizon with binoculars. Everywhere the ice lay tightly packed and solid. McIlroy reported a further drop of two degrees Fahrenheit. The filmy, freezing surface of the leads had become definitely frozen over, so that there was not a drop of water to be seen anywhere. Even to the northward the outlook was bad, and I began to fear that after all we might be beset. That we could push no farther into the heavy ice was certain. I decided to remain where I was for the day, but longer than that would be fatal unless a change occurred in the meantime. I manœuvred the ship to a large solid floe to enable the scientists to take their instruments over the side, and give all hands a chance of exercise after the cramping spell of shipboard. Near by a fat Weddell seal lay asleep. I shot it, and McIlroy and Macklin skinned it and took the blubber to the bunkers. Carr, with the assistance of Marr, Naisbitt and Argles, brought in some ice for use as drinking water.

_Photo: Wilkins_]

_Photo: Wilkins_]

Sea ice, although salt, has the peculiar property that if piled up for two or three days, either naturally as pressure ridges or artificially by heaping up a number of frozen slabs, the salt leaves the upper pieces, which can be melted down and freely used as drinking water. Physicists have not been able to explain fully the phenomenon. It is, however, an easily demonstrable fact, and it is by this property of the ice alone that ships have been able to winter in the pack. In the height of summer, when the sun beats down strongly upon the ice, pools of water form on the surface of the floes. They are fresh and can be used for drinking. It is necessary, however, if water is being taken from this source, to see that the floe is a good solid one, not “rotted” underneath, in which case it may be brackish. During some of our marches over the ice of the Weddell Sea after the loss of the _Endurance_ the going was very bad and the work tremendously hard on account of soft snow, which let the men down to the hips and the dogs to their bellies, and we suffered severely from thirst. When we encountered any of these pools they were freely used by men and dogs for drinking, and we never noticed any salty flavour.

The eating of snow is bad; of this there can be no doubt, though I have seen it stated in the writings of some explorers that it is quite suitable for quenching thirst, and all that is necessary is to overcome the prejudice against its use. The eating of a little snow is harmless, but if one indulges in the practice for a long time the mouth becomes very dry due to the paralysing effect of cold on the salivary glands. The result is that more and more of it is required and the dryness of the mouth is intensified. Any weak spots which may have developed in the teeth are at once discovered, with consequent severe facial neuralgia. The swallowing of the scarcely melted water tends to upset digestion, as is well seen in the United States of America, where the frequent taking of iced drinks is a national practice and dyspepsia is the national complaint. This is not a theoretical observation, for as an enthusiastic young man in my early days of exploration I made the experiment to my sorrow, and I have noted the effects upon other members of the different expeditions which have entered these regions.

Worsley, with the assistance of Dell and Watts, took a sounding, finding bottom at 1,089 fathoms in lat. 69° 17´ S. and 17° 9´ E. long. This showed a shoaling of 466 fathoms in twenty-nine miles, and certainly indicated the approach to the continental shelf. Once again I climbed to the crow’s nest and scanned the horizon to the south. The sky in that direction had a hard white look such as one would get over snow-covered land, but is also seen over densely packed ice. I felt sure that if we could only work our way for another fifty miles to the south we should sight or find indications of land, but no ship ever built could possibly have pushed through the ice to the south of us, not even the most powerful ice-breakers.

Of animal and bird life there was very little, but though if present they would have been additional evidence in favour of the proximity of land, their absence did not necessarily negative it.

Looking backwards to the north I saw that the ice in that direction, though less dense than that to the south, was settling firm and hard, and I decided that as soon as the scientific staff had completed their observations I must beat a hasty and energetic retreat.

Few people can realize what an effort it had been to force the little _Quest_ to this position. It was hard to have to turn back. It was necessary, however, to make every effort to escape this freeze up, but once in loose pack I was determined to seize the first chance to push south again.