Part 34 (2/2)

As the tableware was limited to three mugs and the Nansen cooker, we had to come in to deal with each course the moment it was ready. Aiming at a really high-cla.s.s meal, Hurley had started by actually cleaning out the cooker.

The absence of reindeer-hair and other oddments made everything taste quite strange, though the basis was still the same old ration with a few remaining ”perks.” After the ”raisin gliders,” soup and a good stiff hoosh, Webb finished his observations while I recorded for him. It is wonderful what sledging does for the appet.i.te. For the first week of the journey, the unaccustomed ration was too much for us; but now when Hurley announced ”Pudding!” we were all still ravenous. It was a fine example of ye goode olde English plum-pudding, made from biscuit grated with the Bonsa-saw, fat picked out of the pemmican, raisins and glaxo-and-sugar, all boiled in an old food-bag.

This pudding was so filling that we could hardly struggle through a savoury, ”Angels on runners,” and cocoa. There was a general recovery when the ”wine” was produced, made from stewed raisins and primus alcohol; and ”The King” was toasted with much gusto. At the first sip, to say the least, we were disappointed. The rule of ”no heel taps”

nearly settled us, and quite a long interval and cigars, saved up for the occasion by Webb, were necessary before we could get courage enough to drink to the Other Sledging Parties and Our Supporting Party.

The sun was low in the south when, cigars out and conversation lagging, we finally toggled in for the finest sleep of the whole journey.

The cook, under a doubtful inspiration, broke forth, later on, into a Christmas Carol:

I've dined in many places but never such as these- It's like the Gates of Heaven when you find you've lost the keys.

I've dined with kings and emperors, perhaps you scarce believe; And even they do funny things when round comes Christmas Eve.

I've feasted with iguanas on a lonely desert isle; Once in the shade of a wattle by a maiden's winsome smile.

I've ”grubbed” at a threepenny hash-house, I've been at a counter-lunch, Reclined at a clap-up cafe where only the ”sw.a.n.kers” munch.

In short, I've dined from Horn to Cape and up Alaska-way But the finest, funniest dinner of all was on that Xmas Day.

For the first ten miles on the afternoon of the 28th, the sail was reefed down to prevent the sledge overrunning us on smooth patches. Not far past the one-hundred-and-ninety-mile mound, which was missed in the drift, we picked up some of the outward tracks--a bas-relief of three footsteps and a yard of sledge-meter track, raised half an inch and undercut by the wind. It was not very much, but quite a comfort when one is navigating in blinding weather.

At 11.30 P.M. we had marched twenty-one miles, and both light and surface were improving, so I proposed making a long run of it. Hurley and Webb eagerly agreed, and we had a preparatory hoosh. Ten miles scudded by monotonously without a sign of the mounds around the one-hundred-and-seventy-mile camp. As we were in the vicinity of a point where we had determined to diverge from our outward track, a course was laid direct for the one-hundred-and-thirteen-mile mark. The sledge-meter, which had been affixed, made its presence evident from time to time by ringing like a cash register, as still another broken spoke struck the forks. We would halt for a moment and extract the remains. Out of the original thirty-six wire spokes, only twelve wire and one wooden one remained. At 11.30 A.M. on December 29, a halt was called and the sledge-meter was then lying over on its side with a helpless expression. It indicated twenty-two miles, making, so we thought, a total of forty-three miles in the twenty-two and a quarter hours since leaving the depot. Observations for position next day proved that in its dying effort it exaggerated the truth; the total run being 41.6 miles.

We were now well ahead of schedule time, there being four and a half days' surplus food; above what was probably required to reach the sixty-seven-and-a-half-mile depot. It was decided to hold three days of this and to use one and a half days food as a bonus during the coming week, as long as we were ahead of our necessary distance. The sledging ration is quite enough to live on, but for the whole of the journey we had felt that we could have done more distance on a slightly larger ration. This may be partly explained by our comparatively high alt.i.tude.

Next morning the sledge-meter was cut away and stuck in the snow. It looked very forlorn sitting askew in its forks, with a pair of worn-out finnesko hanging over it.

After twelve miles with a favourable wind, Webb took more observations; Hurley and I recording by turns. There were several small holes in the tent which needed mending, and I experimented with adhesive plaster from the medical kit with great success. Heated over a fusee and pressed hard down between the bottoms of mugs, held outside and inside, the patches adhered well and made a permanent job.

Early on December 31, 1912, snow was falling. The light gave Hurley an attack of snow-blindness and a miserable day. Crampons were worn to give some security to the foothold on the uneven track. The position, after a trudge of fifteen miles, was estimated at five miles east of the one-hundred-and-twenty-three-mile mound.

On New Year's Day, 1913, the wind was fresher and the surface improved.

Estimation placed us to the north of one hundred and thirteen miles, but we were not hopeful in the light falling snow of seeing a mound. Soon, however, the snow ceased, and Webb made out a hillock two miles ahead.

It was identified as the one at one hundred and nine miles.

It had been my turn to be s...o...b..ind. I was so bad that the only thing to do was to camp or ride on the sledge. The trail changed here to straight downwind, so Webb and Hurley undertook the job, hauling the sledge with me as a pa.s.senger for three and a half miles to the one-hundred-and-five-mile mound. It must have been a trying finish to a run of twenty miles.

In spite of the spell, which was a sleepless one, I was no better in the morning and again had to ride. The others pulled away for five miles with a good helping wind, but in a provoking light. The camp was made where the one-hundred-mile mound was judged to be. We spent longer over lunch, hoping that the clouds would clear. At last we moved on, or rather _I_ was moved on. After two miles the surface became heavier. My eyes were better now on account of the rest and a snow ”poultice” Webb had invented. I harnessed-in for five miles over light, unpacked snow, with piecrust underneath. The day's work was twelve miles.

The snow-clouds broke at noon on January 3, and a reliable lat.i.tude was obtained. It agreed with our reckoning. Persevering over the same trying surface as on the previous day, we sighted the ninety-mile-mound in the rear as a rift broke in the sky. We must have pa.s.sed a few hundred yards from it.

We were still eleven miles from the depot, so at breakfast on the 4th the rations were reduced by one-half to give plenty of time to locate our goal. On the 4th the sky was clear, but surface drift prevented us from seeing any mounds till, in the afternoon, the ramps near the sixty-seven-mile depot were discovered in fitful glimpses. They bore too much to the north, so we altered course correspondingly to the west, camping in rising wind and drift, with great hopes for the morrow.

A densely overcast sky on the 5th; light snow falling! We moved on two miles, but not being able to see one hundred yards, camped again; then walking as far as seemed safe in various directions. One could do nothing but wait for clear weather. The clouds lightened at 6 P.M. and again at 9 P.M., when alt.i.tudes of the sun were secured, putting us four miles south of the depot.

With only one chronometer watch, one has to rely entirely on dead reckoning for longitude, the rate of a single watch being very variable.

The longitude obtained on this occasion from our latest known rate moved us several miles to the east of the depot, so I concluded that our distances since the camp at ninety miles had been overestimated, and that we were probably to the south-east of it. Accordingly, we s.h.i.+fted four miles to the north-west, but by this time it had again clouded over and nothing could be seen.

On the 6th the sky was still overcast, but a lucky peep at noon aligned us on the exact lat.i.tude of the depot. We walked east and west, but it snowed persistently and everything was invisible.

It is weary work waiting in the tent for weather to improve. During this time Hurley amused himself and us by composing a Christmas carol on the Christmas dinner; a fragment from which has already appeared. I whiled away a whole afternoon, cutting up the remains of two cigars which had refused to draw. Sliced up with a pair of scissors and mixed with a few of Hurley's cigarettes, they made very good smoking tobacco.

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