Part 9 (1/2)

I came back and found Quillan lighting a fire.

'Our bearers are nearly dead with cold,' he explained. 'They'll crack up if we don't do something. Two woodcutter blokes died here of exposure two years ago. But if I can get this fire going for them in the lee of this rock, our chaps will be all right.'

The rain poured down even more heavily than before, and it looked darker than ever. The s.h.i.+vering negroes, the bamboos bent low with rain, the black rocks, were like figures and things moving in the twilight of a dream.

Again I went and looked at the stream above. Vance appeared to have chosen rightly. The stream was swollen but did not look dangerous at that point, particularly with a good rope. Higher up it would have been hopeless.

'I tell you, d.i.c.ky,' I said. (It was the first time I had called him that and I don't know why I did, except that we all suddenly seemed to be very close to one another.) 'I tell you what, d.i.c.ky. We'll take all our ropes, you knot them together and then I'll go across. I am bigger than you.'

'I don't think that is necessary,' he said. 'I know the way. You don't. And with a rope it will be easy.'

We joined up the ropes, tested the result in every way, pulling it, leaning on it. It seemed tight and strong. We took Vance's valise straps and added them to the end, just in case. I then tied it round Vance's chest with a knot that couldn't slip. I made sure it could not tighten and hinder his breathing.

As I tied it I said, 'd.i.c.ky, are you sure you are happy about this and know how to do it, for if you are not I would much rather do it myself?'

'Of course I know,' he said with a deep laugh. 'I have done it scores of times in Burma. And I must hurry. I want to get those poor black devils under shelter as soon as I can.'

'Well, remember,' I said, 'keep your face to the stream; always lean against it; go into it carefully and feel well round your feet with your stick before you move.'

He took up the stout stick that we had cut for him. I called Quillan and two of the bearers. Quillan and I took the rope. I braced my feet against a tree on the edge of the stream, just in case, but I was not at all worried.

Vance waded in. The water came about to his navel. He went steadily on for some distance then, to my bewilderment, turned his back slightly on the stream. It was the first deviation from plan.

He took another step or two, stopped, suddenly abandoned his stick to the stream and yelled to us, 'Let out the rope!'

It was the second deviation from plan. I was horrified. What the h.e.l.l was he up to? Before we had even properly grasped his meaning he had thrown himself on the stream and was swimming a b.r.e.a.s.t.stroke. As was inevitable, the stream at once caught him and quickly swept him to where it foamed and bubbled like a waterfall over the edge of the track. The unexpected speed with which all of this had happened was the most terrifying thing about it. Even so, Vance had got to within a foot of the far bank, was on the verge of reaching it when the water swept him over the edge and he disappeared from our view.

Quillan and I were braced for the shock. As we saw it coming we both shouted for the bearers, who rushed to our a.s.sistance in a body. The rope tightened in a flash. The strain was tremendous. Vance's body, no longer water-borne but suspended out of sight, below the edge of the rocky track, with the weight and stream of water pouring on top of it, strained the rope to the utmost. Yet it held.

I think it would have continued to hold if the angle and violent impact of the water on the body had not now with incredible speed whipped Vance along the sharp edge of the rocks, swung him from the far side over towards our bank and chafed the rope badly in the process. It still held for a second or two. We worked our way along it towards him were within two yards of him when the rope snapped.

At that moment we knew that he was dead. Anyone who stood with us in the black rain, amid those black cliffs in that world of storming, falling, rus.h.i.+ng, blind water, must have known that he was dead. Quillan turned round, lifted a face to me naked and bare with misery, and said hoa.r.s.ely, 'What to do, now? He is dead, you know!'

I nodded and said, 'Please take a search party as far as you can, Peter, and see what you can see.'

He immediately set out. I called Leonard and some bearers and started to undo our baggage. It was obvious we could not cross now. We had lost all our rope; we had lost one body with a rope, we could not risk losing one without a rope. Nor could we stay there.

Quillan was back almost at once. I was not surprised. We were, as I have said before, on the edge of the Great Ruo gorge.

He shook his head. 'Not a sign, not a hope. He is dead and there is nothing we can do now except to see that these fellows don't conk out.'

He indicated the bearers.

We called them all round us. They were cold and terribly shaken by Vance's death. One old man was crying and they were all s.h.i.+vering as if with malaria. We told them to dump their loads and to start back up the mountain to the huts we had slept in the night before. A moan of despair rose up from them. They said they wanted to sit by the river, wanted to make a fire and wait for the sun. But I knew that that only meant that the spirit had gone out of them, that they had given up hope and were resigned to do no more than sit down and die in comfort.

It was then that Leonard, the puny plainsman, the sophisticated native from the towns, stood up, unsolicited, and lashed them with his tongue. I don't know what he said, but he insulted them into some shape of spirit.

We distributed all our own and Vance's clothes among them. That cheered them. They began to laugh and to tease one another, at the sight of their companions in tennis s.h.i.+rts, grey sweaters too big for them, in green, blue, red and grey striped pyjamas, and my own green jungle bush-s.h.i.+rts with their red 15 Corps flashes still on them.

I expect it was an incongruous sight in that world of rain, falling water and black, impersonal rock, but I did not find it at all funny. It seemed to me to fill the cup of our misery to overflowing. I expect whatever G.o.ds sit on this African Olympus might well find it amusing to kill a young man of twenty-eight in order to dress up some of the despised, ubiquitous outcasts of their African kingdom in silk pyjamas in the pouring rain. To me, just to kill was bad enough; to mock the kill an intolerable perfection of tragedy. I came near to joining in Quillan's tears at that moment, but fortunately I got angry as well, so angry that I believe if my strength had matched my rage I could have picked up the whole of Mlanje and thrown it over the edge of the world into the pit of time itself.

I walked up to the bearers in anger such as I have never known and told them, by look and gestures, to get the h.e.l.l up the mountain without delay. In that mood, Quillan and I got them up the steep, slippery sides of the gorge that we had come down only a few moments before.

At half past twelve we were back in our camp of the night before; we started a great, blazing fire and dried ourselves. The warmth and the sight of fire and smoke effected an amazing revival of spirit among the Africans. I was discussing with Quillan a plan for going out myself through the Fort Lister gap to fetch help, leaving him there with the bearers because he knew the language, when the oldest forester spoke up and said: 'You can't do that, Bwana. It is too far. But I know a short way over the top that will bring us to Chambe safely by sundown.'

Quillan asked them all if they had heard what the forester said, understood, approved and were prepared to follow him implicitly? They all said emphatically, 'Yes!' It was the only thing to do and they would do it.

By one o'clock we were climbing back up the peaks behind our camp, into clouds and into rain which seemed more violent than ever.

Peter Quillan was at his best. He was firm yet patient with the bearers, steadily urged them on, but it could not have been easy. He was heartbroken, and from time to time I could see he was in tears. He was deeply attached to Vance and was blaming himself bitterly for the accident. I did my best to comfort him. I couldn't see how he was to be blamed at all, and if he were, then what about me? He, after all, had not been worried by a sense of the future. It wasn't he who had lain awake at nights half stifled by a sense of death and listening to the dark drummer of Africa beating-up the weather round Mlanje. But as I comforted him and we slowly forced the bearers up the black peaks in front of us, I too was sick at heart and desperately tired.

Without any preliminary training I had been scrambling round these monstrous peaks from dawn until sunset for nine days, and I could now hardly lift my legs. Heaven knows I was fit, my lungs and spirit were all right, and my rage with the mountain and its gorge spurred me on. The problem was purely mechanical. My legs and feet were so abused that the muscles rebelled and would not react instinctively. It seemed to me that all my reflexes had gone. I had to treat each step as a mechanical and separate ent.i.ty in the movement of my body. I could move only with a deliberate, calculated, conscious and determined effort of will. At one moment I thought seriously of retiring to the huts lest I should not be able to continue, and so should bring disaster on the others.

Quillan was amazing. His forester's muscles were intact. He cheered and helped me on by word and example. When, afterwards, we told people of this journey over the highest and wildest part of Mlanje they would hardly credit it. But on the day of Vance's death we did nearly twenty miles' climbing. I hope never to do such a journey again.

For two hours after leaving the hut we continued to climb, at the steepest of angles, into deepening cloud and rain. Our guide, the old forester, in his rags and tatters, dripping with water, was unbelievable. He climbed at our head with his stick held in one hand in front of him. Every now and then he parted the gra.s.ses with it, peered at them intently, or tapped a stone, listening carefully to its ring, and then changed direction to the left or the right; but he never faltered. Over and over again the rain and mist completely hid him from my view. It was dark, it was black; even at the best of times it was grey all around us.

After two hours, as far as one could judge in the mist, we seemed to pa.s.s right over the top of a peak, and our course began to drop slowly down. The relief to my muscles was timely.

Quillan offered me some whisky and water. I do not drink spirits as a rule, but I accepted gratefully and pushed on with renewed energy. At four o'clock, we suddenly came out of the mist and rain; we walked through it as if it had been a wall. At one minute it was raining; the next we were in the sunlight looking down on the long ledge by Tuchila.

Oceans & Rivers Irish-born polar explorer. After failing to reach the Pole in 1908 (see here), Shackleton returned south in 1914; his intention, now that the Pole had been achieved by both Amundsen and Scott, was to cross the vast waste of Antarctica itself. Things went wrong almost from the start. The expedition's s.h.i.+p, the Endurance, was frozen solid in the Weddell Sea, drifting in the ice for ten months before being crushed. The expedition then made camp on the ice floes, which carried north into warmer waters, cracking and shrinking until the ice beneath the men measured only 200ft by 100ft. At this, the expedition escaped into three lifeboats and eventually landed on Elephant Island in the South Shetlands. This was not salvation, however, for Elephant Island was uninhabited and barren. To secure relief, Shackleton decided that a small group of men led by himself would undertake a boat journey to South Georgia, 800 miles away across the most savage seas on Earth. Their vessel was the James Caird, a 22-foot-long lifeboat.

The weather was fine on 23 April, and we hurried forward our preparations. It was on this day I decided finally that the crew for the James Caird should consist of Worsley, Crean, McNeish, McCarthy, Vincent and myself. A storm came on about noon, with driving snow and heavy squalls. Occasionally the air would clear for a few minutes, and we could see a line of pack ice, five miles out, driving across from west to east. This sight increased my anxiety to get away quickly. Winter was advancing, and soon the pack might close completely round the island and stay our departure for days or even for weeks, I did not think that ice would remain around Elephant Island continuously during the winter, since the strong winds and fast currents would keep it in motion. We had noticed ice and bergs going past at the rate of four or five knots. A certain amount of ice was held up about the end of our spit, but the sea was clear where the boat would have to be launched.

Worsley, Wild and I climbed to the summit of the seaward rocks and examined the ice from a better vantage point than the beach offered. The belt of pack outside appeared to be sufficiently broken for our purposes, and I decided that, unless the conditions forbade it, we would make a start in the James Caird on the following morning. Obviously the pack might close at any time. This decision made, I spent the rest of the day looking over the boat, gear, and stores, and discussing plans with Worsley and Wild.

Our last night on the solid ground of Elephant Island was cold and uncomfortable. We turned out at dawn and had breakfast. Then we launched the Stancomb Wills and loaded her with stores, gear, and ballast, which would be transferred to the James Caird when the heavier boat had been launched. The ballast consisted of bags made from blankets and filled with sand, making a total weight of about 1,000lb. In addition we had gathered a number of round boulders and about 250lb of ice, which would supplement our two casks of water.

The stores taken in the James Caird, which would last six men for one month, were as follows: 30 boxes of matches 6 gallons paraffin 1 tin methylated spirit 10 boxes of flamers 1 box of blue lights 2 Primus stoves with spare parts and p.r.i.c.kers 1 Nansen aluminium cooker 6 sleeping-bags A few spare socks A few candles and some blubber-oil in an oil-bag Food: Cases sledging rations = 300 rations Cases nut food = 200 rations Cases biscuits = 600 biscuits 1 case lump sugar 30 packets of Trumilk 1 tin of Bovril cubes 1 tin of Cerebos salt 36 gallons of water 112 lb of ice Instruments: s.e.xtant Sea anchor Binoculars Charts Prismatic compa.s.s Aneroid The swell was slight when the Stancomb Wills was launched and the boat got under way without any difficulty; but half an hour later, when we were pulling down the James Caird, the swell increased suddenly. Apparently the movement of the ice outside had made an opening and allowed the sea to run in without being blanketed by the line of pack. The swell made things difficult. Many of us got wet to the waist while dragging the boat out a serious matter in that climate. When the James Caird was afloat in the surf she nearly capsized among the rocks before we could get her clear, and Vincent and the carpenter, who were on the deck, were thrown into the water. This was really bad luck, for the two men would have small chance of drying their clothes after we had got under way. Hurley, who had the eye of the professional photographer for 'incidents', secured a picture of the upset, and I firmly believe that he would have liked the two unfortunate men to remain in the water until he could get a 'snap' at close quarters; but we hauled them out immediately, regardless of his feelings.

The James Caird was soon clear of the breakers. We used all the available ropes as a long painter to prevent her drifting away to the north-east, and then the Stancomb Wills came alongside, transferred her load, and went back to the sh.o.r.e for more. As she was being beached this time the sea took her stern and half filled her with water. She had to be turned over and emptied before the return journey could be made. Every member of the crew of the Stancomb Wills was wet to the skin. The water casks were towed behind the Stancomb Wills on this second journey, and the swell, which was increasing rapidly, drove the boat on to the rocks, where one of the casks was slightly stove in. This accident proved later to be a serious one, since some sea water had entered the cask and the contents were now brackish.

By midday the James Caird was ready for the voyage. Vincent and the carpenter had secured some dry clothes by exchange with members of the sh.o.r.e party (I heard afterwards that it was a full fortnight before the soaked garments were finally dried), and the boat's crew was standing by waiting for the order to cast off. A moderate westerly breeze was blowing. I went ash.o.r.e in the Stancomb Wills and had a last word with Wild, who was remaining in full command, with directions as to his course of action in the event of our failure to bring relief, but I practically left the whole situation and scope of action and decision to his own judgement, secure in the knowledge that he would act wisely. I told him that I trusted the party to him and said goodbye to the men. Then we pushed off for the last time, and within a few minutes I was aboard the James Caird. The crew of the Stancomb Wills shook hands with us as the boats b.u.mped together and offered us the last good wishes. Then, setting our jib, we cut the painter and moved away to the north-east. The men who were staying behind made a pathetic little group on the beach, with the grim heights of the island behind them and the sea seething at their feet, but they waved to us and gave three hearty cheers. There was hope in their hearts and they trusted us to bring the help that they needed.

I had all sails set, and the James Caird quickly dipped the beach and its line of dark figures. The westerly wind took us rapidly to the line of pack, and as we entered it I stood up with my arm around the mast, directing the steering, so as to avoid the great lumps of ice that were flung about in the heave of the sea. The pack thickened and we were forced to turn almost due east, running before the wind towards a gap I had seen in the morning from the high ground. I could not see the gap now, but we had come out on its bearing and I was prepared to find that it had been influenced by the easterly drift. At four o'clock in the afternoon we found the channel, much narrower than it had seemed in the morning but still navigable. Dropping sail, we rowed through without touching the ice anywhere, and by 5.30 p.m. we were clear of the pack with open water before us. We pa.s.sed one more piece of ice in the darkness an hour later, but the pack lay behind, and with a fair wind swelling the sails we steered our little craft through the night, our hopes centred on our distant goal. The swell was very heavy now, and when the time came for our first evening meal we found great difficulty in keeping the Primus lamp alight and preventing the hoosh splas.h.i.+ng out of the pot. Three men were needed to attend to the cooking, one man holding the lamp and two men guarding the aluminium cooking pot, which had to be lifted clear of the Primus whenever the movement of the boat threatened to cause a disaster. Then the lamp had to be protected from water, for sprays were coming over the bows and our flimsy decking was by no means watertight. All these operations were conducted in the confined s.p.a.ce under the decking, where the men lay or knelt and adjusted themselves as best they could to the angles of our cases and ballast. It was uncomfortable, but we found consolation in the reflection that without the decking we could not have used the cooker at all.

The tale of the next sixteen days is one of supreme strife amid heaving waters. The sub-Antarctic Ocean lived up to its evil winter reputation. I decided to run north for at least two days while the wind held and so get into warmer weather before turning to the east and laying a course for South Georgia. We took two-hourly spells at the tiller. The men who were not on watch crawled into the sodden sleeping-bags and tried to forget their troubles for a period; but there was no comfort in the boat. The bags and cases seemed to be alive in the unfailing knack of presenting their most uncomfortable angles to our rest-seeking bodies. A man might imagine for a moment that he had found a position of ease, but always discovered quickly that some unyielding point was impinging on muscle or bone. The first night aboard the boat was one of acute discomfort for us all, and we were heartily glad when the dawn came and we could set about the preparation of a hot breakfast.

This record of the voyage to South Georgia is based upon scanty notes made day by day. The notes dealt usually with the bare facts of distances, positions, and weather, but our memories retained the incidents of the pa.s.sing days in a period never to be forgotten. By running north for the first two days I hoped to get warmer weather and also to avoid lines of pack that might be extending beyond the main body. We needed all the advantage that we could obtain from the higher lat.i.tude for sailing on the great circle, but we had to be cautious regarding possible ice streams. Cramped in our narrow quarters and continually wet by the spray, we suffered severely from cold throughout the journey. We fought the seas and the winds and at the same time had a daily struggle to keep ourselves alive. At times we were in dire peril. Generally we were upheld by the knowledge that we were making progress towards the land where we would be, but there were days and nights when we lay hove to, drifting across the storm-whitened seas and watching, with eyes interested rather than apprehensive, the uprearing ma.s.ses of water, flung to and fro by Nature in the pride of her strength. Deep seemed the valleys when we lay between the reeling seas. High were the hills when we perched momentarily on the tops of giant combers. Nearly always there were gales. So small was our boat and so great were the seas that often our sail flapped idly in the calm between the crests of two waves. Then we would climb the next slope and catch the full fury of the gale where the wool-like whiteness of the breaking water surged around us. We had our moments of laughter rare, it is true, but hearty enough. Even when cracked lips and swollen mouths checked the outward and visible signs of amus.e.m.e.nt we could see a joke of the primitive kind. Man's sense of humour is always most easily stirred by the petty misfortunes of his neighbours, and I shall never forget Worsley's efforts on one occasion to place the hot aluminium stand on top of the Primus stove after it had fallen off in an extra heavy roll. With his frostbitten fingers he picked it up, dropped it, picked it up again, and toyed with it gingerly as though it were some fragile article of lady's wear. We laughed, or rather gurgled with laughter.