The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard (online e reader .txt) 📗

and in good condition. With a large number of dogs I suppose one team can go ahead when it is going well⁠—changing places with another⁠—each keeping the others going. But I do not think that these dogs now will do much more; but they have already done as much as any dogs of which we have any record.

The land is clearing gradually. I have never seen such contrasts of black rock and white snow, and White Island was capped with great ranges of black cumulus, over which rose the pure white peaks of the Royal Society Range in a blue sky. The Barrier itself was quite a deep grey, making a beautiful picture. And now Observation Hill and Castle Rock are in front. I don’t suppose I shall ever see this view again: but it is associated with many memories of returning to home and plenty after some long and hard journeys: in some ways I feel sorry⁠—but I have seen it often enough.

November 25. Early morning. We came in 24 miles with our loads, to find the best possible news⁠—Campbell’s Party, all well, are at Cape Evans. They arrived here on November 6, starting from Evans Coves on September 30. What a relief it is, and how different things seem now! It is the first real bit of good news since February last⁠—it seems an age. We mean to get over the sea-ice, if possible, as soon as we can, and then we shall hear their story.

November 26. Early morning. Starting from Hut Point about 6:45 p.m. last evening, we came through by about 9 p.m., and sat up talking and hearing all the splendid news till past 2 a.m. this morning.

All the Northern Party look very fat and fit, and they are most cheerful about the time they have had, and make light of all the anxious days they must have spent and their hard times.

I cannot write all their story. When the ship was battling with the pack to try and get in to them they had open water in Terra Nova Bay to the horizon, as seen from 200 feet high. They prepared for the winter, digging their hut into a big snowdrift a mile from where they were landed. They thought that the ship had been wrecked⁠—or that everyone had been taken off from here, and that then the ship had been blown north by a succession of furious gales which they had and could not get back. They never considered seriously the possibility of sledging down the coast before the winter. They got settled in and were very warm⁠—so warm that in August they did away with one door, of which they had three, of biscuit boxes and sacking.

Their stove was the bottom of an oil tin, and they cooked by dripping blubber on to seal bones, which became soaked with the blubber, and Campbell tells me they cooked almost as quickly as a primus. Of course they were filthy. Their main difficulty was dysentery and ptomaine poisoning.

Their stories of the winter are most amusing⁠—of “Placing the Plug, or Sports in the Antarctic”; of lectures; of how dirty they were; of their books, of which they had four, including David Copperfield. They had a spare tent, which was lucky, for the bamboos of one of theirs were blown in during a big wind, and the men inside it crept along the piedmont on hands and knees to the igloo and slept two in a bag. How the seal seemed as if they would give out, and they were on half rations and very hungry: and they were thinking they would have to come down in the winter, when they got two seals: of the fish they got from the stomach of a seal⁠—“the best feed they had”⁠—the blubber they have eaten.

But they were buried deep in the snow and quite warm. Big winds all the time from the W. S. W., cold winds off the plateau⁠—in the igloo they could hear almost nothing outside⁠—how they just had a biscuit a day at times, sugar on Sundays, etc.

And so all is well in this direction, and we have done right in going south, and we have at least succeeded in getting all records. I suppose any news is better than no news.

Evening. The Pole Party photos of themselves at the Pole and at the Norwegian cairn (a Norwegian tent, post and two flags) are very good indeed⁠—one film is unused, one used on these two subjects: taken with Birdie’s camera. All the party look fit and well, and their clothes are not iced up. It was calm at the time: the surface looks rather soft.

Atkinson and Campbell have gone to Hut Point with one dog-team, and we are all to forgather here. The ice still seems good from here to Hut Point: all else open water as far as can be seen.

A steady southerly wind has been blowing here for three days now. The mules should get into Hut Point today.

It is the happiest day for nearly a year⁠—almost the only happy one.

XVII The Polar Journey Don Juan This creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be enslaved while he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason. I tell you, gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of what he now calls God’s work to do, and what he will later on call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to himself personally.⁠ ⁠… Don Juan Every idea for which Man will die will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last that he is no better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better than Muhammad, he will arise, more