Chapter XIX: Never Again (1)

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my onely light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.
HERBERT.

I shall inevitably be asked for a word of mature judgment of the expedition of a kind that was impossible when we were all close up to it, and when I was a subaltern of 24, not incapable of judging my elders, but too young to have found out whether my judgment was worth anything. I now see very plainly that though we achieved a first-rate tragedy, which will never be forgotten just because it was a tragedy, tragedy was not our business. In the broad perspective opened up by ten years' distance, I see not one journey to the Pole, but two, in startling contrast one to another. On the one hand, Amundsen going straight there, getting there first, and returning without the loss of a single man, and without having put any greater strain on himself and his men than was all in the day's work of polar exploration. Nothing more business-like could be imagined. On the other hand, our expedition, running appalling risks, performing prodigies of superhuman endurance, achieving immortal renown, commemorated in august cathedral sermons and by public statues, yet reaching the Pole only to find our terrible journey superfluous, and leaving our best men dead on the ice. To ignore such a contrast would be ridiculous: to write a book without accounting for it a waste of time.

First let me do full justice to Amundsen. I have not attempted to disguise how we felt towards him when, after leading us to believe that he had equipped the Fram for an Arctic journey, and sailed for the north, he suddenly made his dash for the south. Nothing makes a more unpleasant impression than a feint. But when Scott reached the Pole only to find that Amundsen had been there a month before him, his distress was not that of a schoolboy who has lost a race. I have described what it had cost Scott and his four companions to get to the Pole, and what they had still to suffer in returning until death stopped them. Much of that risk and racking toil had been undertaken that men might learn what the world is like at the spot where the sun does not decline in the heavens, where a man loses his orbit and turns like a joint on a spit, and where his face, however he turns, is always to the North. The moment Scott saw the Norwegian tent he knew that he had nothing to tell that was not already known. His achievement was a mere precaution against Amundsen perishing on his way back; and that risk was no greater than his own. The Polar Journey was literally laid waste: that was the shock that staggered them. Well might Bowers be glad to see the last of Norskies' tracks as their homeward paths diverged.

All this heartsickness has passed away now; and the future explorer will not concern himself with it. He will ask, what was the secret of Amundsen's slick success? What is the moral of our troubles and losses? I will take Amundsen's success first. Undoubtedly the very remarkable qualities of the man himself had a good deal to do with it. There is a sort of sagacity that constitutes the specific genius of the explorer; and Amundsen proved his possession of this by his guess that there was terra firma in the Bay of Whales as solid as on Ross Island. Then there is the quality of big leadership which is shown by daring to take a big chance. Amundsen took a very big one indeed when he turned from the route to the Pole explored and ascertained by Scott and Shackleton and determined to find a second pass over the mountains from the Barrier to the plateau. As it happened, he succeeded, and established his route as the best way to the Pole until a better is discovered. But he might easily have failed and perished in the attempt; and the combination of reasoning and daring that nerved him to make it can hardly be overrated. All these things helped him. Yet any rather conservative whaling captain might have refused to make Scott's experiment with motor transport, ponies and man-hauling, and stuck to the dogs; and to the use of ski in running those dogs; and it was this quite commonplace choice that sent Amundsen so gaily to the Pole and back: with no abnormal strain on men or dogs, and no great hardship either. He never pulled a mile from start to finish.

The very ease of the exploit makes it impossible to infer from it that Amundsen's expedition was more highly endowed in personal qualities than ours. We did not suffer from too little brains or daring: we may have suffered from too much. We were primarily a great scientific expedition, with the Pole as our bait for public support, though it was not more important than any other acre of the plateau. We followed in the steps of a polar expedition which brought back more results than any of its forerunners: Scott's Discovery voyage. We had the largest and most efficient scientific staff that ever left England. We were discursive. We were full of intellectual interests and curiosities of all kinds. We took on the work of two or three expeditions.

It is obvious that there are disadvantages in such a division of energy. Scott wanted to reach the Pole: a dangerous and laborious exploit, but a practicable one. Wilson wanted to obtain the egg of the Emperor penguin: a horribly dangerous and inhumanly exhausting feat which is none the less impracticable because the three men who achieved it survived by a miracle. These two feats had to be piled one on top of the other. What with the Depôt Journey and others, in addition to these two, we were sledged out by the end of our second sledging season, and our worst year was still to come. We, the survivors, went in search of the dead when there was a possibly living party waiting in the ice somewhere for us to succour them. That turned out all right, because when we got back, we found Campbell's party self-extricated and waiting for us, alive and well. But suppose they also had perished, what would have been said of us?

The practical man of the world has plenty of criticism of the way things were done. He says dogs should have been taken; but he does not show how they could have been got up and down the Beardmore. He is scandalized because 30 lbs. of geological specimens were deliberately added to the weight of the sledge that was dragging the life out of the men who had to haul it; but he does not realize that it is the friction surfaces of the snow on the runners which mattered and not the dead weight, which in this case was almost negligible. Nor does he know that these same specimens dated a continent and may elucidate the whole history of plant life. He will admit that we were all very wonderful, very heroic, very beautiful and devoted: that our exploits gave a glamour to our expedition that Amundsen's cannot claim; but he has no patience with us, and declares that Amundsen was perfectly right in refusing to allow science to use up the forces of his men, or to interfere for a moment with his single business of getting to the Pole and back again. No doubt he was; but we were not out for a single business: we were out for everything we could add to the world's store of knowledge about the Antarctic.

Of course the whole business simply bristles with "ifs": If Scott had taken dogs and succeeded in getting them up the Beardmore: if we had not lost those ponies on the Depôt Journey: if the dogs had not been taken so far and the One Ton Depôt had been laid: if a pony and some extra oil had been depôted on the Barrier: if a four-man party had been taken to the Pole: if I had disobeyed my instructions and gone on from One Ton, killing dogs as necessary: or even if I had just gone on a few miles and left some food and fuel under a flag upon a cairn: if they had been first at the Pole: if it had been any other season but that.... But always the bare fact remains that Scott could not have travelled from McMurdo Sound to the Pole faster than he did except with dogs; all the king's horses and all the king's men could not have done it. Why, then, says the practical man, did we go to McMurdo Sound instead of to the Bay of Whales? Because we gained that continuity of scientific observation which is so important in this work: and because the Sound was the starting-point for continuing the exploration of the only ascertained route to the Pole, via the Beardmore Glacier.

I am afraid it was all inevitable: we were as wise as any one can be before the event. I admit that we, scrupulously economical of our pemmican, were terribly prodigal of our man-power. But we had to be: the draft, whatever it may have been on the whole, was not excessive at any given point; and anyhow we just had to use every man to take every opportunity. There is so much to do, and the opportunities for doing it are so rare. Generally speaking, I don't see how we could have done differently, but I don't want to see it done again; I don't want it to be necessary to do it again. I want to see this country tackle the job, and send enough men to do one thing at a time. They do it in Canada: why not in England too?

But we wasted our man-power in one way which could have been avoided. I have described how every emergency was met by calling for volunteers, and how the volunteers were always forthcoming. Unfortunately volunteering was relied on not only for emergencies, but for a good deal of everyday work that should have been organised as routine; and the inevitable result was that the willing horses were overworked. It was a point of honour not to ca' canny. Men were allowed to do too much, and were told afterwards that they had done too much; and that is not discipline. They should not have been allowed to do too much. Until our last year we never insisted on a regular routine.

Money was scarce: probably Scott could not have obtained the funds for the expedition if its objective had not been the Pole. There was no lack of the things which could be bought across the counter from big business houses--all landing, sledging, and scientific equipment was first-class--but one of the first and most important items, the ship, would have sent Columbus on strike, and nearly sent us to the bottom of the sea.

People talk of the niggardly equipment of Columbus when he sailed west from the Canaries to try a short-cut to an inhabited continent of magnificent empires, as he thought; but his three ships were, relatively to the resources of that time, much better than the one old tramp in which we sailed for a desert of ice in which the evening and morning are the year and not the day, and in which not even polar bears and reindeers can live. Amundsen had the Fram, built for polar exploration _ad hoc_. Scott had the Discovery. But when one thinks of these Nimrods and Terra Novas, picked up second-hand in the wooden-ship market, and faked up for the transport of ponies, dogs, motors, and all the impedimenta of a polar expedition, to say nothing of the men who have to try and do scientific work inside them, one feels disposed to clamour for a Polar Factory Act making it a crime to ship men for the ice in vessels more fit to ply between London Bridge and Ramsgate.

And then the begging that is necessary to obtain even this equipment. Shackleton hanging round the doors of rich men! Scott writing begging letters for months together! Is the country not ashamed?

Modern civilized States should make up their minds to the endowment of research, which includes exploration; and as all States benefit alike by the scientific side of it there is plenty of scope for international arrangement, especially in a region where the mere grabbing of territory is meaningless, and no Foreign Office can trace the frontier between King Edward's Plateau and King Haakon's. The Antarctic continent is still mostly unexplored; but enough is known of it to put any settlement by ordinary pioneer emigration, pilgrim fathers and the like, out of the question. Ross Island is not a place for a settlement: it is a place for an elaborately equipped scientific station, with a staff in residence for a year at a time. Our stay of three years was far too much: another year would have driven the best of us mad. Of the five main journeys which fell to my lot, one, the Winter Journey, should not have been undertaken at all with our equipment; and two others, the Dog Journey and the Search Journey, had better have been done by fresh men. It is no use repeating that Englishmen will respond to every call and stick it to the death: they will (some of them); but they have to pay the price all the same; and the price in my case was an overdraft on my vital capital which I shall never quite pay off, and in the case of five bigger, stronger, more seasoned men, death. The establishment of such stations and of such a service cannot be done by individual heroes and enthusiasts cadging for cheques from rich men and grants from private scientific societies: it is a business, like the Nares Arctic expedition, for public organization.

I do not suppose that in these days of aviation the next visit to the Pole will be made by men on foot dragging sledges, or by men on sledges dragged by dogs, mules or ponies; nor will depôts be laid in that way. The pack will not, I hope, be broken through by any old coal-burning ship that can be picked up in the second-hand market. Specially built ships, and enough of them; specially engined tractors and aeroplanes; specially trained men and plenty of them, will all be needed if the work is to be done in any sort of humane and civilized fashion; and Cabinet ministers and voters alike must learn to value knowledge that is not baited by suffering and death. My own bolt is shot; I do not suppose I shall ever go south again before I go west; but if I do it will be under proper and reasonable conditions. I may not come back a hero; but I shall come back none the worse; for I repeat, the Antarctic, in moderation as to length of stay, and with such accommodation as is now easily within the means of modern civilized Powers, is not half as bad a place for public service as the worst military stations on the equator. I hope that by the time Scott comes home--for he is coming home: the Barrier is moving, and not a trace of our funeral cairn was found by Shackleton's men in 1916--the hardships that wasted his life will be only a horror of the past, and his _via dolorosa_ a highway as practicable as Piccadilly.

And now let me come down to tin tacks. No matter how well the thing is done in future, its organizers will want to know at first all we can tell them about oil, about cold, and about food. First, as to oil.

Scott complains of a shortage of oil at several of his last depôts. There is no doubt that this shortage was due to the perishing of the leather washers of the tins which contained the paraffin oil. All these tins had been subjected to the warmth of the sun in summer and the autumn temperatures, which were unexpectedly cold. In his Voyage of the Discovery Scott wrote as follows of the tins in which they drew their oil when sledging: "Each tin had a small cork bung, which was a decided weakness; paraffin _creeps_ in the most annoying manner, and a good deal of oil was wasted in this way, especially when the sledges were travelling over rough ground and were shaken or, as frequently happened, capsized. It was impossible to make these bungs quite tight, however closely they were jammed down, so that in spite of a trifling extra weight a much better fitting would have been a metallic screwed bung. To find on opening a fresh tin of oil that it was only three-parts full was very distressing, and of course meant that the cooker had to be used with still greater care."[349] Amundsen wrote of his paraffin: "We kept it in the usual cans but they proved too weak; not that we lost any paraffin, but Bjaaland had to be constantly soldering to keep them tight."[350]

Our own tins were furnished with the metallic screwed stoppers which Scott recommended. There was no trouble reported[351] until we came up to One Ton Camp when on the Search Journey. Here was the depôt of food and oil which I had laid in the previous autumn for the Polar Party, stowed in a canvas 'tank' which was buried beneath seven feet of snow; the oil was placed on the top of the snow, in order that the red tins might prove an additional mark for the depôt. When we dug out the tank the food inside was almost uneatable owing to the quantity of paraffin which had found its way down through seven feet of snow during the winter and spring.

We then found the Polar Party and learned of the shortage of oil. After our return to Cape Evans some one was digging about the camp and came across a wooden case containing eight one-gallon tins of paraffin. These had been placed there in September 1911, to be landed at Cape Crozier by the Terra Nova when she came down. The ship could not take them: they were snowed up during the winter, lost and forgotten, until dug up fifteen months afterwards. Three tins were full, three empty, one a third full and one two-thirds full.

There can be no doubt that the oil, which was specially volatile, tended to vaporize and escape through the stoppers, and that this process was accelerated by the perishing, and I suggest also the hardening and shrinking, of the leather washers. Another expedition will have to be very careful on this point: they might reduce the risk by burying the oil.

The second point about which something must be said is the unexpected cold met by Scott on the Barrier, which was the immediate cause of the disaster. "No one in the world would have expected the temperatures and surfaces which we encountered at this time of the year.... It is clear that these circumstances come on very suddenly, and our wreck is certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather, which does not seem to have any satisfactory cause."[352]

They came down the glacier in plus temperatures: nor was there anything abnormal for more than a week after they got on to the Barrier. Then there came a big drop to a -37° minimum on the night of February 26. It is significant that the sun began to dip below the southern horizon at midnight about this time. "There is no doubt the middle of the Barrier is a pretty awful locality," wrote Scott.

Simpson, in his meteorological report, has little doubt that the temperatures met by the Polar Party were abnormal. The records "clearly bring to light the possibility of great cold at an extremely early period in the year within a comparatively few miles of an open sea where the temperatures were over 40 degrees higher." "It is quite impossible to believe that normally there is a difference of nearly 40 degrees in March between McMurdo Sound and the South of the Barrier." The temperatures recorded by other sledge parties in March 1912 and those recorded at Cape Evans form additional evidence, in Simpson's opinion, that the temperatures experienced by Scott were not such as might be expected during normal autumn weather.

Simpson's explanation is based upon the observations made in McMurdo Sound by sending up balloons with self-recording instruments attached. These showed that very rapid radiation takes place from the snow surface in winter, which cools the air in the immediate neighbourhood: a cold layer of air is thus formed near the ground, which may be many degrees colder than the air above it. It becomes, as it were, colder than it ought to be. This, however, can only happen during an absence of wind: when a wind blows the cold layer is swept away, the air is mixed and the temperature rises.

The absence of wind from the south noted by Scott was, in Simpson's opinion, the cause of the low temperatures met by Scott: the temperature was reduced ten degrees below normal at Cape Evans, and perhaps twenty degrees where Scott was.[353]

The third question is that of food. It is this point which is most important to future explorers. It is a fact that the Polar Party failed to make their distance because they became weak, and that they became weak although they were eating their full ration or more than their full ration of food, save for a few days when they went short on the way down the Beardmore Glacier. The first man to weaken was the biggest and heaviest man in the expedition: "the man whom we had least expected to fail."

The rations were of two kinds. The Barrier (B) ration was that which was used on the Barrier during the outward journey towards the Pole. The Summit (S) ration was the result of our experiments on the Winter Journey. I expect it is the best ration which has been used to date, and consisted of biscuits 16, pemmican 12, butter 2, cocoa 0.57, sugar 3 and tea 0.86 ounces; total 34.43 ounces daily per man.

The twelve men who went forward started this S ration at the foot of the Beardmore, and it was this ration which was left in all depôts to see them home. It was much more satisfying than the Barrier ration, and men could not have eaten so much when leading ponies or driving dogs in the early stages of summer Barrier sledging: but man-hauling is a different business altogether from leading ponies or driving dogs.

It is calculated that the body requires certain proportions of fat, carbohydrates and proteins to do certain work under certain conditions: but just what the absolute quantities are is not ascertained. The work of the Polar Party was laborious: the temperatures (the most important of the conditions) varied from comparative warmth up and down the glacier to an average of about -20° in the rarefied air of the plateau. The temperatures met by them on their return over the Barrier were not really low for more than a week, and then there came quite commonly minus thirties during the day with a further drop to minus forties at night, when for a time the sun was below the horizon. These temperatures, which are not very terrible to men who are fresh and whose clothing is new, were ghastly to these men who had striven night and day almost ceaselessly for four months on, as I maintain, insufficient food. Did these temperatures kill them?

Undoubtedly the low temperatures caused their death, inasmuch as they would have lived had the temperatures remained high. But Evans would not have lived: he died before the low temperatures occurred. What killed Evans? And why did the other men weaken as they did, though they were eating full rations and more? Weaken so much that in the end they starved to death?

I have always had a doubt whether the weather conditions were sufficient to cause the tragedy. These men on full rations were supposed to be eating food of sufficient value to enable them to do the work they were doing, under the conditions which they actually met until the end of February, without loss of strength. They had more than their full rations, but the conditions in March were much worse than they imagined to be possible: when three survivors out of the five pitched their Last Camp they were in a terrible state. After the war I found that Atkinson had come to wonder much as I, but he had gone farther, for he had the values of our rations worked out by a chemical expert according to the latest knowledge and standards. I may add that, being in command after Scott's death, he increased the ration for the next year's sledging, so I suppose he had already come to the conclusion that the previous ration was not sufficient. The following are some of the data for which I am indebted to him: the whole subject will be investigated by him and the results published in a more detailed form.

According to the most modern standards the food requirements for laborious work at a temperature of zero Fahr. (which is a fair Barrier average temperature to take) are 7714 calories to produce 10,069 foot-tons of work. The actual Barrier ration which we used would generate 4003 calories, equivalent to 5331 foot-tons of work. Similar requirements for laborious work at -10° Fahr. (which is a high average plateau temperature) are 8500 calories to produce 11,094 foot-tons of work. The actual Summit ration would generate 4889 calories, equivalent to 6608 foot-tons of work. These requirements are calculated for total absorption of all food-stuffs: but in practice, by visual proof, this does not take place: this is especially noticeable in the case of fats, a quantity of which were digested neither by men, ponies, nor dogs.

Several things go to prove that our ration was not enough. In the first case we were probably not as fit as we seemed after long sledge journeys. There is no doubt that when sledging men developed an automaticity of certain muscles at the expense of other muscles: for instance, a sledge could be hauled all day at the expense of the arms, and we had little power to lift weights at the end of several months of sledging. In relation to this I would add that, when the relief ship arrived in February 1912, four of us were at Cape Evans, but just arrived from three months of the Polar Journey. The land party, we four among them, were turned on to sledge stores ashore. This in practice meant twenty miles every day dragging a sledge; a good deal of 'humping' heavy cases, from five o'clock in the morning to very late at night; with uncertain meals and no rests. I can remember now how hard that work was to myself and, I expect, to those others who had been away sledging. The ship's party sledged only every other day "because they were not used to it." This was extremely bad organization, and in view of the possibility that some of the men might be required for further sledging in the autumn, just silly.

Again, there is the experience of the man-hauling parties of the Polar Journey. There was, you may remember, a man-hauling party on the way to the Beardmore Glacier. They travelled with a light sledge but they lost weight on the Barrier ration. It is significant that they picked up condition when they started the Summit ration, especially Lashly.

The Polar Party and the two returning parties, who were on the Summit ration from the foot of the Beardmore until the end of their journeys, weakened, in Atkinson's opinion, more than they should have done had their ration been sufficient. The First Return Party covered approximately 1100 statute miles. At the end of their journey their pulling muscles were all right, but Atkinson, who led the party, considers that they were at least 70 per cent weaker in other muscles. They all lost a great deal of weight, though they had the best conditions of the three returning parties, and the temperatures met by them averaged well over zero.

The Second Return Party faced much worse conditions. They were only three men, and one of the three was so sick that for 120 miles he could not pull and for 90 miles he had to be dragged on the sledge. The average temperature approximated zero. They were extremely exhausted.

Scott makes constant reference to the increasing hunger of the Polar Party: it is clear that the food did not compensate for the conditions which were met in increasing severity. Yet they were eating rather more than their full ration a considerable part of the time. It has to be considered that the temperatures met by them averaged far below -10°: that they did not absorb all their food: that increased heat was wanted not only for energy to do extra work caused by bad surfaces and contrary winds, but also to heat their bodies, and to thaw out their clothing and sleeping-bags.

I believe it to be clear that the rations used by us must not only be increased by future expeditions, but co-ordinated in different proportions of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. Taking into consideration the fact that our bodies were not digesting the amount of fats we had provided, Atkinson suggests that it is useless to increase the fats at the expense of the protein and carbohydrates. He recommends that fats should total about 5 ounces daily. The digestion of carbohydrates is easy and complete, and though that of protein is more complicated there are plenty of the necessary digestive ferments. The ration should be increased by equal amounts of protein and carbohydrates; both should be provided in as dry and pure a form as possible.

There is no censure attached to this criticism. Our ration was probably the best which has been used: but more is known now than was known then. We are all out to try and get these things right for the future.[354]

Campbell reached Hut Point only five days after we left it with the dog-teams. A characteristic note left to greet us on our return regretted they were too late to take part in the Search Journey. If I had lived through ten months such as those men had just endured, wild horses would not have dragged me out sledging again. But they were keen to get some useful work done in the time which remained until the ship arrived.

We had the Polar records: Campbell and his men, unaided, had not only survived their terrible winter, but had sledged down the coast after it. We ourselves, faced by a difficult alternative, had fallen on our feet. We never hoped for more than this: we seldom hoped for so much.

I wanted a series of Adélie penguin embryos from the rookery at Cape Royds, but had not expected an opportunity of getting them because I was away sledging during the summer months. Now the chance had come. Atkinson wanted to work on parasites at the same place, and others to survey. But the real job was an ascent of Erebus, the active volcano which rose from our doors to some 13,400 feet in height. A party of Shackleton's men under Professor David went up it in March, and managed to haul a sledge up to 5800 feet, from which point they had to portage their gear. A year before this Debenham, with the help of a telescope, selected a route by which they could haul a sledge up to 9000 feet. There proved to be no great difficulty about it; it was just a matter of legs and breath.

They were a cheery company, part-singing in the evenings and working hard all day. It was an uneventful trip, Debenham said, and very harmonious: the best trip he had down there. Both Debenham and Dickason suffered from mountain sickness, however, and they were the two smokers! The clearness of the air was marked. At 5000 feet they could plainly see Mount Melbourne and Cape Jones, between two and three hundred miles away, and several uncharted mountains over to the west, but they were unable to plot them accurately because they could get direction rays from one point only. The Sound itself was covered by cloud most of the time, but Beaufort Island and Franklin Island were clear. Unlike David's party, they could see no signs whatever of volcanic action on Mount Bird, which is almost entirely covered with ice on which it was to be expected that some mark might be left. At 9000 feet Terror looked very imposing, but Mount Bird and Terra Nova were insignificant and uninteresting. The valley between the old crater and the slopes of the second crater greatly impressed them, and they found a fine little crevassed glacier in it. Both Priestley and Debenham are of opinion that it is possible to get to Terror by this valley, and that there are no crevassed areas or impossible slopes on the way. All the same it would probably be more sensible to go from Cape Crozier.

At a point about 9000 feet up, Priestley, Gran, Abbott and Hooper started to make the ascent to the active crater on December 10. They packed the tent, poles, bags, inner cooker and cooking gear, with four days' provisions, and reached the second crater at about 11,500 feet, to be hung up by cloud all the next day. At these altitudes the temperature varied between -10° and -30°, though at sea-level simultaneously they were round about freezing-point. By 1 A.M. on the 12th the conditions were good--clear, with a southerly wind blowing the steam away from the summit. The party got away as soon as possible and reached the lip of the active crater in a few hours. Looking down they were unable to see the bottom, for it was full of steam: the sides sloped at a steep angle for some 500 feet, when they became sheer precipices: the opening appeared to be about 14,000 paces round. The top is mostly pumice, but there is also a lot of kenyte, much the same as at sea-level: the old crater was mostly kenyte, proving that this is the oldest rock of the island: felspar crystals must be continually thrown out, for they were lying about on the top of the snow; I have one nearly 3½ inches long.

Two men went back to the camp, for one had a frost-bitten foot. This left Priestley and Gran, who tried to boil the hypsometer but failed owing to the wind, which was variable and enveloped them from time to time in steam and sulphur vapour. They left a record on a cairn and started to return. But when they had got 500 feet down Priestley found that he had left a tin of exposed films on the top instead of the record. Gran said he would go back and change it. He had reached the top when there was a loud explosion: large blocks of pumice were hurled out with a big smoke cloud; probably a big bubble had burst. Gran was in the middle of it, heard it gurgle before it burst, saw "blocks of pumiceous lava, in shape like the halves of volcanic bombs, and with bunches of long, drawn-out, hair-like shreds of glass in their interior."[355] This was Pélé's hair. Gran was a bit sick from sulphur dioxide fumes afterwards. They reached Cape Royds on the 16th, the very successful trip taking fifteen days.

Meanwhile Shackleton's old hut was very pleasant at this time of year: in winter it was a bit too draughty. With bright sunlight, a lop on the sea which splashed and gurgled under the ice-foot, the beautiful mountains all round us, and the penguins nesting at our door, this was better than the Beardmore Glacier, where we had expected to be at this date. What then must it have been to the six men who were just returned from the very Gate of Hell? And the food: "Truly Shackleton's men must have fed like turkey-cocks from all the delicacies here: boiled chicken, kidneys, mushrooms, ginger, Garibaldi biscuits, soups of all kinds: it is a splendid change. Best of all are the fresh-buttered skua's eggs which we make for breakfast. In fact, life is bearable with all that has been unknown so long at last cleared up, and our anxieties for Campbell's party laid at rest."[356]

For three weeks I worked among the Adélie penguins at Cape Royds, and obtained a complete series of their embryos. It was always Wilson's idea that embryology was the next job of a vertebral zoologist down south. I have already explained that the penguin is an interesting link in the evolutionary chain, and the object of getting this embryo is to find out where the penguins come in.[357] Whether or no they are more primitive than other nonflying birds, such as the apteryx, the ostrich, the rhea and the moa, which last is only just extinct, is an open question. But wingless birds are still hanging on to the promontories of the southern continents, where there is less rivalry than in the highly populated land areas of the north. It may be that penguins are descended from ancestors who lived in the northern hemisphere in a winged condition (even now you may sometimes see them try to fly), and that they have been driven towards the south.

If penguins are primitive, it is rational to infer that the most primitive penguin is farthest south. These are the two Antarcticists, the Emperor and the Adélie. The latter appears to be the more numerous and successful of the two, and for this reason we are inclined to search among the Emperors as being among the most primitive penguins, if not the most primitive of birds now living: hence the Winter Journey. I was glad to get, in addition, this series of Adélie penguins' embryos, feeling somewhat like a giant who had wandered on to the wrong planet, and who was distinctly in the way of its true inhabitants.

We returned too late to see the eggs laid, and therefore it was impossible to tell how old the embryos were. My hopes rose, however, when I saw some eggless nests with penguins sitting upon them, but later I found that these were used as bachelor quarters by birds whose wives were sitting near. I tried taking eggs from nests and was delighted to find that new eggs appeared: these I carefully marked, and it was not until I opened one two days later to find inside an embryo at least two weeks old, that I realized that penguins added baby-snatching to their other immoralities. Some of those from whom I took eggs sat upon stones of a similar size and shape with every appearance of content: one sat upon the half of the red tin of a Dutch cheese. They are not very intelligent.

All the world loves a penguin: I think it is because in many respects they are like ourselves, and in some respects what we should like to be. Had we but half their physical courage none could stand against us. Had we a hundredth part of their maternal instinct we should have to kill our children by the thousand. Their little bodies are so full of curiosity that they have no room for fear. They like mountaineering, and joy-riding on ice-floes: they even like to drill.

One day there had been a blizzard, and lying open to the view of all was a deserted nest, a pile of coveted stones. All the surrounding rookery made their way to and fro, each husband acquiring merit, for, after each journey, he gave his wife a stone. This was the plebeian way of doing things; but my friend who stood, ever so unconcerned, upon a rock knew a trick worth two of that: he and his wife who sat so cosily upon the other side.

The victim was a third penguin. He was without a mate, but this was an opportunity to get one. With all the speed his little legs could compass he ran to and fro, taking stones from the deserted nest, laying them beneath a rock, and hurrying back for more. On that same rock was my friend. When the victim came up with his stone he had his back turned. But as soon as the stone was laid and the other gone for more, he jumped down, seized it with his beak, ran round, gave it to his wife and was back on the rock (with his back turned) before you could say Killer Whale. Every now and then he looked over his shoulder, to see where the next stone might be.

I watched this for twenty minutes. All that time, and I do not know for how long before, that wretched bird was bringing stone after stone. And there were no stones there. Once he looked puzzled, looked up and swore at the back of my friend on his rock, but immediately he came back, and he never seemed to think he had better stop. It was getting cold and I went away: he was coming for another.

The life of an Adélie penguin is one of the most unchristian and successful in the world. The penguin which went in for being a true believer would never stand the ghost of a chance. Watch them go to bathe. Some fifty or sixty agitated birds are gathered upon the ice-foot, peering over the edge, telling one another how nice it will be, and what a good dinner they are going to have. But this is all swank: they are really worried by a horrid suspicion that a sea-leopard is waiting to eat the first to dive. The really noble bird, according to our theories, would say, "I will go first and if I am killed I shall at any rate have died unselfishly, sacrificing my life for my companions"; and in time all the most noble birds would be dead. What they really do is to try and persuade a companion of weaker mind to plunge: failing this, they hastily pass a conscription act and push him over. And then--bang, helter-skelter, in go all the rest.

They take turns in sitting on their eggs, and after many days the fathers may be seen waddling down towards the sea with their shirt-fronts muddied, their long trick done. It may be a fortnight before they return, well-fed, clean, pleased with life, and with a grim determination to relieve their wives, to do their job. Sometimes they are met by others going to bathe. They stop and pass the time of day. Well! Perhaps it would be more pleasant, and what does a day or two matter anyhow. They turn; clean and dirty alike are off to the seaside again. This is when they say, "The women are splendid."

Life is too strenuous for them to have any use for the virtues of brotherly love, good works, charity and benevolence. When they mate the best thief wins: when they nest the best pair of thieves hatch out their eggs. In a long unbroken stream, which stretches down below the sea-ice horizon, they march in from the open sea. Some are walking on their human feet: others tobogganing upon their shiny white breasts. After their long walk they must have a sleep, and then the gentlemen make their way into the already crowded rookery to find them wives. But first a suitor must find, or steal, a pebble, for such are the penguin jewels: they are of lava, black, russet or grey, with almond-shaped crystals bedded in them. They are rare and of all sizes, but that which is most valued is the size of a pigeon's egg. Armed with one of these he courts his maid, laying it at her feet. If accepted he steals still more stones: she guards them jealously, taking in the meantime any safe opportunity to pick others from under her nearest neighbours. Any penguin which is unable to fight and steal successfully fails to make a good high nest, or loses it when made. Then comes a blizzard, and after that a thaw: for it thaws sometimes right down by the sea-shore where the Adélies have their nurseries. The eggs of the strong and wicked hatch out, but those of the weak are addled. You must have a jolly good pile of stones to hatch eggs after a blizzard like that in December 1911, when the rookeries were completely snow-covered: nests, eggs, parents and all.

Once hatched the chicks grow quickly from pretty grey atoms of down to black lumps of stomach topped by a small and quite inadequate head. They are two or more weeks old, and they leave their parents, or their parents leave them, I do not know which. If socialism be the nationalization of the means of production and distribution, then they are socialists. They divide into parents and children. The adult community comes up from the open sea, bringing food inside them: they are full of half-digested shrimps. But not for their own children: these, if not already dead, are lost in a crowd of hungry tottering infants which besiege each food-provider as he arrives. But not all of them can get food, though all of them are hungry. Some have already been behindhand too long: they have not managed to secure food for days, and they are weak and cold and very weary.

"As we stood there and watched this race for food we were gradually possessed with the idea that the chicks looked upon each adult coming up full-bellied from the shore as not a parent only, but a food-supply. The parents were labouring under a totally different idea, and intended either to find their own infants and feed them, or else to assimilate their already partially digested catch themselves. The more robust of the young thus worried an adult until, because of his importunity, he was fed. But with the less robust a much more pathetic ending was the rule. A chick that had fallen behind in this literal race for life, starving and weak, and getting daily weaker because it could not run fast enough to insist on being fed, again and again ran off pursuing with the rest. Again and again it stumbled and fell, persistently whining out its hunger in a shrill and melancholy pipe, till at last the race was given up. Forced thus by sheer exhaustion to stop and rest, it had no chance of getting food. Each hurrying parent with its little following of hungry chicks, intent on one thing only, rushed quickly by, and the starveling dropped behind to gather strength for one more effort. Again it fails, a robuster bird has forced the pace, and again success is wanting to the runt. Sleepily it stands there, with half-shut eyes, in a torpor resulting from exhaustion, cold, and hunger, wondering perhaps what all the bustle round it means, a little dirty, dishevelled dot, in the race for life a failure, deserted by its parents, who have hunted vainly for their own offspring round the nest in which they hatched it, but from which it may by now have wandered half a mile. And so it stands, lost to everything around, till a skua in its beat drops down beside it, and with a few strong, vicious pecks puts an end to the failing life."[358]

There is a great deal to be said for this kind of treatment. The Adélie penguin has a hard life: the Emperor penguin a horrible one. Why not kill off the unfit right away, before they have had time to breed, almost before they have had time to eat? Life is a stern business in any case: why pretend that it is anything else? Or that any but the best can survive at all? And in consequence, I challenge you to find a more jolly, happy, healthy lot of old gentlemen in the world. We _must_ admire them: if only because they are so much nicer than ourselves! But it is grim: Nature is an uncompromising nurse.

Nature was going to give us a bad time too if we were not relieved, and on January 17, as there were still no signs of the ship, it was decided to prepare for another winter. We were to go on rations; to cook with oil, for nearly all the coal was gone; to kill and store up seal. On January 18 we started our preparations, digging a cave to store more meat, and so forth. I went off seal hunting after breakfast, and having killed and cut up two, came back across the Cape at mid-day. All the men were out working in the camp. There was nothing to be seen in the Sound, and then, quite suddenly, the bows of the ship came out from behind the end of the Barne Glacier, two or three miles away. We watched her cautious approach with immense relief.

"Are you all well," through a megaphone from the bridge.

"The Polar Party died on their return from the Pole: we have their records." A pause and then a boat.

Evans, who had been to England and made a good recovery from scurvy, was in command: with him were Pennell, Rennick, Bruce, Lillie and Drake. They reported having had a very big gale indeed on their way home last year.

We got some apples off the ship, "beauties, I want nothing better.... Pennell is first-class, as always...." "One notices among the ship's men a rather unnatural way of talking: not so much in special instances, but as a whole, contact with civilization gives it an affected sound: I notice it in both officers and men."[359]

"_January 19. On board the Terra Nova._ After 28 hours' loading we left the old hut for good and all at 4 P.M. this afternoon. It has been a bit of a rush and little sleep last night. It is quite wonderful now to be travelling a day's journey in an hour: we went to Cape Royds in about that time and took off geological and zoological specimens. I should like to sit up and sketch all these views, which would have meant long travelling without the ship, but I feel very tired. The mail is almost too good for words. Now, with the latest waltz on the gramophone, beer for dinner and apples and fresh vegetables to eat, life is more bearable than it has been for many a long weary week and month. I leave Cape Evans with no regret: I never want to see the place again. The pleasant memories are all swallowed up in the bad ones."[360]

Before the ship arrived it was decided among us to urge the erection of a cross on Observation Hill to the memory of the Polar Party. On the arrival of the ship the carpenter immediately set to work to make a great cross of jarrah wood. There was some discussion as to the inscription, it being urged that there should be some quotation from the Bible because "the women think a lot of these things." But I was glad to see the concluding line of Tennyson's "Ulysses" adopted: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

The open water stretched about a mile and a half south of Tent Island, and here we left the ship to sledge the cross to Hut Point at 8 A.M. on January 20. The party consisted of Atkinson, Wright, Lashly, Crean, Debenham, Keohane and Davies, the ship's carpenter and myself.

"_Evening. Hut Point._ We had a most unpleasant experience coming in. We struck wind and drift just about a mile from Hut Point: then we saw there was a small thaw pool off the Point, and came out to give it a wide berth. Atkinson put his feet down into water: we turned sharp out, and then Crean went right in up to his arms, and we realized that the ice was not more than three or four inches of slush. I managed to give him a hand out without the ice giving, and we went on floundering about. Then Crean went right in again, and the sledge nearly went too: we pulled the sledge, and the sledge pulled him out. Except for some more soft patches that was all, but it was quite enough. I think we got out of it most fortunately."