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

my eyes were too bad to go on ski. We had a lot of drift and wind and very cold. Had ZnSO4 and cocaine in my eyes at night and didn’t get to sleep at all for the pain⁠—dozed about an hour in the morning only.”⁠ ⁠… “Marched on foot again all day as I couldn’t see my way on ski at all, Birdie used my ski. Eyes still very painful and watering. Tired out by the evening, had a splendid night’s sleep, and though very painful across forehead tonight they are much better.”316

The surface was awful: in his diary of the day after they left the Pole (January 19) Wilson wrote an account of it.

“We had a splendid wind right behind us most of the afternoon and went well until about 6 p.m. when the sun came out and we had an awful grind until 7:30 when we camped. The sun comes out on sandy drifts, all on the move in the wind, and temp. −20°, and gives us an absolutely awful surface with no glide at all for ski or sledge, and just like fine sand. The weather all day has been more or less overcast with white broken altostratus, and for 3 degrees above the horizon there is a grey belt looking like a blizzard of drift, but this in reality is caused by a constant fall of minute snow crystals, very minute. Sometimes instead of crystal plates the fall is of minute agglomerate spicules like tiny sea-urchins. The plates glitter in the sun as though of some size, but you can only just see them as pinpoints on your burberry. So the spicule collections are only just visible. Our hands are never warm enough in camp to do any neat work now. The weather is always uncomfortably cold and windy, about −23°, but after lunch today I got a bit of drawing done.”317

All the joy had gone from their sledging. They were hungry, they were cold, the pulling was heavy, and two of them were not fit. As long ago as January 14 Scott wrote that Oates was feeling the cold and fatigue more than the others318 and again he refers to the matter on January 20.319 On January 19 Wilson wrote: “We get our hairy faces and mouths dreadfully iced up on the march, and often one’s hands very cold indeed holding ski-sticks. Evans, who cut his knuckle some days ago at the last depot, has a lot of pus in it tonight.” January 20: “Evans has got 4 or 5 of his fingertips badly blistered by the cold. Titus also his nose and cheeks⁠—al[so] Evans and Bowers.” January 28: “Evans has a number of badly blistered finger-ends which he got at the Pole. Titus’ big toe is turning blue-black.” January 31: “Evans’ fingernails all coming off, very raw and sore.” February 4: “Evans is feeling the cold a lot, always getting frostbitten. Titus’ toes are blackening, and his nose and cheeks are dead yellow. Dressing Evans’ fingers every other day with boric vaseline: they are quite sweet still.” February 5: “Evans’ fingers suppurating. Nose very bad [hard] and rotten-looking.”320

Scott was getting alarmed about Evans, who “has dislodged two fingernails tonight; his hands are really bad, and, to my surprise, he shows signs of losing heart over it. He hasn’t been cheerful since the accident.”321 “The party is not improving in condition, especially Evans, who is becoming rather dull and incapable.” “Evans’ nose is almost as bad as his fingers. He is a good deal crocked up.”322

Bowers’ diary, quoted above, finished on January 25, on which day they picked up their One and a Half Degree Depot. “I shall sleep much better with our provision bag full again,” wrote Scott that night. “Bowers got another rating sight tonight⁠—it was wonderful how he managed to observe in such a horribly cold wind.” They marched 16 miles the next day, but got off the outward track, which was crooked. On January 27 they did 14 miles on a “very bad surface of deep-cut sastrugi all day, until late in the afternoon when we began to get out of them.”323 “By Jove, this is tremendous labour,” said Scott.

They were getting into the better surfaces again: 15.7 miles for January 28, “a fine day and a good march on very decent surface.”324 On January 29 Bowers wrote his last full day’s diary: “Our record march today. With a good breeze and improving surface we were soon in among the double tracks where the supporting party left us. Then we picked up the memorable camp where I transferred to the advance party. How glad I was to change over. The camp was much drifted up and immense sastrugi were everywhere, S. S. E. in direction and S. E. We did 10.4 miles before lunch. I was breaking back on sledge and controlling; it was beastly cold and my hands were perished. In the afternoon I put on my dogskin mitts and was far more comfortable. A stiff breeze with drift continues: temperature −25°. Thank God our days of having to face it are over. We completed 19.5 miles [22 statute] this evening, and so are only 29 miles from our precious [Three Degree] Depot. It will be bad luck indeed if we do not get there in a march and a half anyhow.”325

Nineteen miles again on January 30, but during the previous day’s march Wilson had strained a tendon in his leg.

“I got a nasty bruise on the Tib[ialis] ant[icus] which gave me great pain all the afternoon.” “My left leg exceedingly painful all day, so I gave Birdie my ski and hobbled alongside the sledge on foot. The whole of the Tibialis anticus is swollen and tight, and full of teno synovitis, and the skin red