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Into the Frozen South

<h2> CHAPTER VIII We Run into Ice </h2> On the night following the easing up of the storm I got a fine sleep, and all the troubles we’d experienced seemed to fade into insignificance. Sleep is a great healer of wounds and it soothes many a problem. But in the morning there was a pretty big sea running and the wind was high, whilst, as the feverish pitching of the hull caused the propeller to race so disconcertingly that it appeared determined to twist itself off and sink down to rest on the ocean floor, the engines were stopped and the ship proceeded under sail alone. I had the wheel on this morning; but I’d got the knack of handling her by now, and found it none so irksome. The wind kept on freshening all the time—not to the same proportions as those of our recent blow, but some of the black squalls were heavy enough to set the rigging harping with the real storm-note, which is an inspiring sound—and we shipped quite a lot of water over the bows. So, as the conditions seemed to be worsening rather than improving, we hove-to again after lunch, with the mizen and staysail set; and the clank of the pumps recommenced. Down below everything was soaked, even Sir Ernest’s cabin and Mr. Wild’s had suffered with the rest. The Boss’s bunk was so completely saturated that he had a bed made up on the wardroom settee; though he used this makeshift berth only a little, for during the bad weather he was almost constantly on the bridge, though his officers, sensing that all was not well with him, repeatedly urged him to go below and rest. But 94 instead of resting he actually stood another officer’s watch in addition to his own in order that his subordinate might secure what he considered to be much-needed rest. That, of course, was Shackleton all over, one of the qualities that made him a leader. But certain of the officers were growing uneasy; they thought the Boss was doing far too much, taking more out of himself than he should have done; and yet, despite their protests, Sir Ernest said: “You fellows are tired and must get rest; leave the ship to me.” And from that he would not be shifted, although he must have known in his own heart that the strain was telling more unbearably every day. Throughout the day the wild conditions continued; but, abating somewhat towards three in the morning, way was once more got on the ship and the voyage proceeded. Some idea of the havoc wrought by the pouring seas was conveyed to my mind when I baled out Sir Ernest’s cabin, which was literally awash with dirty water, everything floating about at hazard, the whole presenting anything but an inviting spectacle. But a bit of conscientious swabbing restored things, and in a while, with a light breeze and a calming sea, it was almost impossible to believe that we had weathered such a snorter as had befallen us. <div class="figcenter p6" style="max-width: 26em;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_094.jpg" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> 1. South Georgian Whaling Station: At Work on Blue Whales. 2. Some Finny Spoil from St. Paul’s Rocks. 3. Launching the Kite for Aerial Observation. 4. Sir Ernest’s Cabin on the Quest. 5. Penguins at Home. 6. Dead Whales in Prince Olaf Harbour. 7. View from above a South Georgia Glacier. </div> </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_095a.jpg" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> Cape Pigeons at South Georgia. </div> </div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_095b.jpg" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> Gentoo Penguins. (Note the Baby Penguin in Centre.) </div> </div> So the Old Year came to an end; its departure signalled by a double ringing of the ship’s bell; and we looked forward with better heart to 1922. I had the first wheel of the New Year—from midnight to 2 p.m.; the sea was smooth and the wind just sufficient to be comfortable, so that we ran along easily under fore and aft canvas alone. After breakfast I came in for a bit of amateur engineering, being detailed to assist the second engineer to repair the deck-winch—an interesting if somewhat greasy task. The wind was dropping; in place of the turbulent waters which had thrashed us so 95 unkindly, a long, oily swell ran across to the narrowed horizon, and a wet mist drooped over all, a mist that later turned to heavy rain, persistent rain, which was by way of being a blessing to people limited in their fresh water supply. To-day I sighted my first penguin; it was swimming some distance away from the ship, and, as an inhabitant of the waste world of the South, was an object of considerable interest. The weather was becoming increasingly cold; and already many of the members of the crew had donned clothing that gave them the look of Antarctic explorers; most of them, also, were growing beards, which gave them the aspect of pirates who had lost all self-respect. Early on the morning of the 2nd of January we passed quite close to a large school of whales, and later on vast numbers of penguins and other Antarctic birds. The temperature having dropped to 38, a close look-out was kept for the ice this temperature indicated, and at 10 a.m. our first iceberg was plainly in sight, though but a mere speck on the horizon. I don’t know what the others felt; I know I was decidedly thrilled, for this was the far-flung sentinel of those vast defences that it was our aim to penetrate. It was like seeing an enemy’s picket and knowing that away behind him were massed formidable odds against which, indomitably, we must pit our strength and courage. Course was altered, and by one o’clock we were abreast the berg; no monster, but all the same, quite big enough to be impressive. It was a hundred feet high—which means seven hundred feet were submerged, as icebergs only show one-eighth their bulk above the surface; and, judging by the gaping fissures in its sides, it was an old-stager, rapidly tiring of life and returning to its native element as quickly as it could. It looked very austere, very cold, though undeniably beautiful, with the blue cavern boring into its massiveness. The sea 96 about was strewn with smaller pieces of ice which had broken away and not yet melted; these formed what I was told is called the tail of the berg. By the time we had passed it fairly the sun was dropping down the western sky in a blaze of scarlet and saffron and gold; an inspiring sight that reminded me of that picture of Turner’s, “The Fighting Téméraire.” During the middle watch two more bergs were seen, without difficulty, for they show up whitely, and seem to give off a curious illumination, called “ice-blink” by old-timers; so there is slight difficulty in avoiding them. The blacker the night is the more perceptible the ice-blink; it is chiefly between lights that the sharpest look-out must be kept. Nevertheless, whenever in the neighbourhood of ice a very careful watch must be maintained, for in addition to the lofty bergs there are also “growlers,” washed masses of ice that lie low in the water, lurking evilly as though anxious only to tear the bottom out of a ship and fling her helpless to the seafloor below. But even with growlers the seas that race over them and cause the growling note, from which they take their name, create sufficient noise to give a timely warning; and sharp eyes can detect the thin, white line of the water breaking upon them. Bergs come from two sources. Either they may be large pieces broken away from the Great Ice Barrier which hems in the Southern Continent, or they may have detached themselves from some great glaciers, which glaciers “calve” periodically, on account of their resistless forward movement down the ravines they create towards the sea. Most Antarctic bergs are flat-topped, lacking those fantastic pinnacles that are usually associated with bergs; but many of them are enormous masses, several square miles in extent and weighing millions of tons. Not that the bigger fellows are the more picturesque, they are only awe-inspiring. 97 Gradually, acted on by rain above and warm currents of the sea below, the berg wears away, whole acres are detached, and in the course of time the vast concern capsizes; and it is a capsized berg that is the most beautiful, for its outlines—worn by the action of the currents—are indeed picturesque. Fine weather continuing, it was possible to settle down again to an orderly routine, and Jimmy Dell found me sufficient work to keep me from fretting. I learnt the art of splicing—working on the topsail sheet; and as lamp-trimmer, too, I was occupied in getting the steaming lights into shape. Maybe it was the strenuous nature of this work that caused me to commit the unmentionable sea-crime of giving a late relief next morning. I was aroused by the skipper yelling down the hatch that eight bells had gone, and I made a record turn-out, being on the bridge within one minute of the alarm. As a rule, I sleep very lightly; but this morning I erred, failed to respond to the usual call at one bell, and so slept on. But I think that quick turn-out made amends! It was the Boss’s watch on deck, and during my trick at the wheel he talked to me with the utmost freedom and enthusiasm of his last memorable expedition, and pointed out the route by which he had crossed South Georgia, the land that was now in view ahead and towards which we were making for refit and overhaul. He called it “a land of storm”; and the term fits it well. It is a little, lonely island situated in the very south of the South Atlantic Ocean, amongst the stormiest seas of all the world. It is over a thousand miles from Cape Horn—the sailors’ graveyard—and nearly three thousand from the Cape of Good Hope. Captain Cook discovered it in 1775, and no doubt was sorry such a dreary wilderness existed. For a long time it was the happy hunting-ground of American sealers, 98 who played such havoc with the valuable fur-seal with which the island then abounded that these animals are now practically extinct. To-day this far-flung outpost of the British Empire—for South Georgia is a British possession, and surely one of its most dismal—is the headquarters of five permanent whaling stations, one of them British, one Argentine, and the rest Norwegian. At this time of year—official summer—the snow was present on the mountains in patches, but the valleys which open very invitingly to the sea were all white. In each valley was a glacier which ended abruptly at the water’s edge in a high, pale blue wall. But the whole aspect of the island was grim and forbidding: a wilderness of rock and ice. Preparations were put in hand for entering harbour; the doctor, with me helping, put a genuine harbour-stow on the sails, and squared up all ropes and gear forward into an orderliness that would not have disgraced a man-of-war. As we plodded on towards our destination large numbers of penguins insisted on popping up unexpectedly out of the still water alongside, and Cape pigeons were numerous. Shortly after 3 p.m. we dropped anchor in the safe and sheltered harbour of Gritviken, near to the whaling station. The old-timers amongst the crew were in their element now; you’d have thought they had suddenly come in sight of home. Particularly was the Boss exultant; he kept on pointing out familiar sights, and the weight of depression that had recently troubled him was quite shaken off. He was brimming over with vigour and energy, as happy as a sand-boy, and sniffed the air like a war-horse scenting a far-off battle. Sight of past victories must have quickened the fighting blood in his veins, and he could hardly restrain himself from rushing ashore at once. There was so much to do and so little 99 time to do it in, that he felt as though every second were precious. The water of the harbour was red with blood, and everywhere was the awful, nauseous stench of rotten whale carcasses. Whale oil may be a very necessary thing, but it is beastly in its securing! Several whalers were anchored near where we lay, and alongside the rough wooden quay lay an Argentine barque and a Norwegian cargo steamer. We were promptly visited by the manager of the whaling station, who went ashore with the Boss, who was bursting with lively zeal; and as soon as possible such of us as were to be spared, pulled ashore in the surf boat, to watch the process of flensing a whale on the slip. For whalers nowadays do not cut-in and try-out their blubber in open water—they tow their catches into harbour where machinery exists for the purpose. The Norwegians who worked at the flensing struck me as being mighty heavy and ponderous, and distinctly bovine of feature. The whole system of whaling is, of course, very interesting, even though unpleasant to those not accustomed to it; but it differs entirely from the methods in the old days of the Dundee whalers. It was then counted an exciting, dangerous calling, and to hunt a whale, harpoon it and bring the fish alongside was about the most thrilling sport in the world. The odds seemed to be somewhat in favour of the whale, and the risks the whalemen ran were unquestionably great. Nowadays there is so little danger as to be negligible, for instead of going out for months and years in lumbering barques, hunting the cetaceans in small whale-boats, and securing them by means of hand-harpoons, untiring persistence and cold pluck, tediously flensing them in the ship’s tackles and rendering down the blubber in the try-works established on the deck, fast steamers set 100 forth in quest of the mighty game, and these steamers are armed with powerful little guns which project a heavy and deadly harpoon, which, fitted with a bomb that bursts when the weapon has penetrated into the whale’s interior, invariably inflicts a fatal wound. No doubt this is a more merciful way of dispatching the monsters; but it savours of cold-blooded slaughter. The whale stands no chance, the whalers run no risk; whaling to-day is merely systematized butchery. And to me, steeped in the old whaling traditions, primed with the picturesque accounts of real whaling, it was subject for sadness to think of these huge and nowadays helpless creatures being preyed upon so mercilessly. Once the whale-ship has secured as many whales as can conveniently be towed—each dead whale being buoyed and marked until the tale is complete—full steam is made for port, and the catch is hauled ashore on to a sloping plane, where the blubber is rapidly and scientifically stripped from the unwieldy corpse and conveyed to the try-pots to be converted into the oil of commerce. We spectators found it treacherous work walking on the slip, which was several inches deep in a slimy horror of blood and blubber. For a considerable distance on each side of the whaling station there is a white fringe of bleached bones washed up by the tide, sole relics of what were once huge fish; but when man, and the sharks, and the birds had all taken toll, these poor remains were all that showed the magnitude of the sea’s finny spoil. Having completed the round of the works, having breathed the oily atmosphere to our complete satisfaction, having seen the entire process of creating oil out of dead whale, we went for a short walk inland, up a slope to a small lake, turning to the left along a route where wet moss and sparse grass grew, returning by way of 101 the shore, where the going was difficult on account of the dry bones littered there. So far as I could see, the land is mainly barren. This wet moss and short tussocky grass flourish to a height of about three hundred feet above sea level, but elsewhere I saw nothing but bare scree slopes, glacier-polished rocks and snow-covered shoulders, topped by the high-soaring, white-clad peaks that never alter though centuries come and go. Better places than South Georgia certainly exist as holiday resorts, I must say. It is administered by certain Britishers, notably a magistrate, an assistant magistrate, two Customs officers, and one policeman. Every barrel of oil exported from the island has to pay a tax, and this staff is here to see the law is enforced. It must be a lonely, monotonous life enough, I should say. These Britishers live together in a house at the entrance to Gritviken Harbour, and what they do in their leisure moments puzzles me to know. We had a volunteer for the Quest here in the shape of a nigger, who spoke with a pronounced Yankee accent, and seemed anxious to enrol himself as assistant cook or something of the sort. He paddled alongside in a canvas canoe, and seemed anything but happy—which is not surprising, for South Georgia and black men somehow don’t seem to mix. He had stowed away aboard an outward-bound steamer from St. Vincent, and he must have found the change trying; but as he belonged to a breed that is noteworthy for its loafing propensities he appealed to us in vain for employment. That night the Boss was in excellent spirits, and vowed our Christmas should be kept on the morrow! 102 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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