South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
freely owing to the continuous wetting, and soon became quite bald in
appearance. The moving of the boulders was weary and painful work. We
came to know every one of the stones by sight and touch, and I have
vivid memories of their angular peculiarities even to-day. They might
have been of considerable interest as geological specimens to a
scientific man under happier conditions. As ballast they were useful.
As weights to be moved about in cramped quarters they were simply
appalling. They spared no portion of our poor bodies. Another of our
troubles, worth mention here, was the chafing of our legs by our wet
clothes, which had not been changed now for seven months. The insides
of our thighs were rubbed raw, and the one tube of Hazeline cream in
our medicine-chest did not go far in alleviating our pain, which was
increased by the bite of the salt water. We thought at the time that we
never slept. The fact was that we would doze off uncomfortably, to be
aroused quickly by some new ache or another call to effort. My own
share of the general unpleasantness was accentuated by a finely
developed bout of sciatica. I had become possessor of this originally
on the floe several months earlier.
Our meals were regular in spite of the gales. Attention to this point
was essential, since the conditions of the voyage made increasing calls
upon our vitality. Breakfast, at 8 a.m., consisted of a pannikin of hot
hoosh made from Bovril sledging ration, two biscuits, and some lumps of
sugar. Lunch came at 1 p.m., and comprised Bovril sledging ration,
eaten raw, and a pannikin of hot milk for each man. Tea, at 5 p.m., had
the same menu. Then during the night we had a hot drink, generally of
milk. The meals were the bright beacons in those cold and stormy days.
The glow of warmth and comfort produced by the food and drink made
optimists of us all. We had two tins of Virol, which we were keeping
for an emergency; but, finding ourselves in need of an oil-lamp to eke
out our supply of candles, we emptied one of the tins in the manner
that most appealed to us, and fitted it with a wick made by shredding a
bit of canvas. When this lamp was filled with oil it gave a certain
amount of light, though it was easily blown out, and was of great
assistance to us at night. We were fairly well off as regarded fuel,
since we had 6½ gallons of petroleum.
A severe south-westerly gale on the fourth day out forced us to heave
to. I would have liked to have run before the wind, but the sea was
very high and the _James Caird_ was in danger of broaching to and
swamping. The delay was vexatious, since up to that time we had been
making sixty or seventy miles a day, good going with our limited sail
area. We hove to under double-reefed mainsail and our little jigger,
and waited for the gale to blow itself out. During that afternoon we
saw bits of wreckage, the remains probably of some unfortunate vessel
that had failed to weather the strong gales south of Cape Horn. The
weather conditions did not improve, and on the fifth day out the gale
was so fierce that we were compelled to take in the double-reefed
mainsail and hoist our small jib instead. We put out a sea-anchor to
keep the _James Caird’s_ head up to the sea. This anchor consisted of a
triangular canvas bag fastened to the end of the painter and allowed to
stream out from the bows. The boat was high enough to catch the wind,
and, as she drifted to leeward, the drag of the anchor kept her head to
windward. Thus our boat took most of the seas more or less end on. Even
then the crests of the waves often would curl right over us and we
shipped a great deal of water, which necessitated unceasing baling and
pumping. Looking out abeam, we would see a hollow like a tunnel formed
as the crest of a big wave toppled over on to the swelling body of
water. A thousand times it appeared as though the _James Caird_ must be
engulfed; but the boat lived. The south-westerly gale had its
birthplace above the Antarctic Continent, and its freezing breath
lowered the temperature far towards zero. The sprays froze upon the
boat and gave bows, sides, and decking a heavy coat of mail. This
accumulation of ice reduced the buoyancy of the boat, and to that
extent was an added peril; but it possessed a notable advantage from
one point of view. The water ceased to drop and trickle from the
canvas, and the spray came in solely at the well in the after part of
the boat. We could not allow the load of ice to grow beyond a certain
point, and in turns we crawled about the decking forward, chipping and
picking at it with the available tools.
When daylight came on the morning of the sixth day out we saw and felt
that the _James Caird_ had lost her resiliency. She was not rising to
the oncoming seas. The weight of the ice that had formed in her and
upon her during the night was having its effect, and she was becoming
more like a log than a boat. The situation called for immediate action.
We first broke away the spare oars, which were encased in ice and
frozen to the sides of the boat, and threw them overboard. We retained
two oars for use when we got inshore. Two of the fur sleeping-bags went
over the side; they were thoroughly wet, weighing probably 40 lbs.
each, and they had frozen stiff during the night. Three men constituted
the watch below, and when a man went down it was better to turn into
the wet bag just vacated by another man than to thaw out a frozen bag
with the heat of his unfortunate body. We now had four bags, three in
use and one for emergency use in case a member of the party should
break down permanently. The reduction of weight relieved the boat to
some extent, and vigorous chipping and scraping did more. We had to be
very careful not to put axe or knife through the frozen canvas of the
decking as we crawled over it, but gradually we got rid of a lot of
ice. The _James Caird_ lifted to the endless waves as though she lived
again.
About 11 a.m. the boat suddenly fell off into the trough of the sea.
The painter had parted and the sea-anchor had gone. This was serious.
The _James Caird_ went away to leeward, and we had no chance at all of
recovering the anchor and our valuable rope, which had been our only
means of keeping the boat’s head up to the seas without the risk of
hoisting sail in a gale. Now we had to set the sail and trust to its
holding. While the _James Caird_ rolled heavily in the trough, we beat
the frozen canvas until the bulk of the ice had cracked off it and then
hoisted it. The frozen gear worked protestingly, but after a struggle
our little craft came up to the wind again, and we breathed more
freely. Skin frost-bites were troubling us, and we had developed large
blisters on our fingers and hands. I shall always carry the scar of one
of these frost-bites on my left hand, which became badly inflamed after
the skin had burst and the cold had bitten deeply.
We held the boat up to the gale during that day, enduring as best we
could discomforts that amounted to pain. The boat tossed interminably
on the big waves under grey, threatening skies. Our thoughts did not
embrace much more than the necessities of the hour. Every surge of the
sea was an enemy to be watched and circumvented. We ate our scanty
meals, treated our frost-bites, and hoped for the improved conditions
that the morrow might bring. Night fell early, and in the lagging hours
of darkness we were cheered by a change for the better in the weather.
The wind dropped, the snow-squalls became less frequent, and the sea
moderated. When the morning of the seventh day dawned there was not
much wind. We shook the reef out of the sail and laid our course once
more for South Georgia. The sun came out bright and clear, and
presently Worsley got a snap for longitude. We hoped that the sky would
remain clear until noon, so that we could get the latitude. We had been
six days out without an observation, and our dead reckoning naturally
was uncertain. The boat must have presented a strange appearance that
morning. All hands basked in the sun. We hung our sleeping-bags to the
mast and spread our socks and other gear all over the deck. Some of the
ice had melted off the _James Caird_ in the early morning after the
gale began to slacken; and dry patches were appearing in the decking.
Porpoises came blowing round the boat, and Cape pigeons wheeled and
swooped within a few feet of us. These little black-and-white birds
have an air of friendliness that is not possessed by the great circling
albatross. They had looked grey against the swaying sea during the
storm as they darted about over our heads and uttered their plaintive
cries. The albatrosses, of the black or sooty variety, had watched with
hard, bright eyes, and seemed to have a quite impersonal interest in
our struggle to keep afloat amid the battering seas. In addition to the
Cape pigeons an occasional stormy petrel flashed overhead. Then there
was a small bird, unknown to me, that appeared always to be in a fussy,
bustling state, quite out of keeping with the surroundings. It
irritated me. It had practically no tail, and it flitted about vaguely
as though in search of the lost member. I used to find myself wishing
it would find its tail and have done with the silly fluttering.
We revelled in the warmth of the sun that day. Life was not so bad,
after all. We felt we were well on our way. Our gear was drying, and we
could have a hot meal in comparative comfort. The swell was still
heavy, but it was not breaking and the boat rode easily. At noon
Worsley balanced himself on the gunwale and clung with one hand to the
stay of the mainmast while he got a snap of the sun. The result was
more than encouraging. We had done over 380 miles and were getting on
for half-way to South Georgia. It looked as though we were going to get
through.
The wind freshened to a good stiff breeze during the afternoon, and the
_James Caird_ made satisfactory progress. I had not realized until the
sunlight came how small our boat really was. There was some influence
in the light and warmth, some hint of happier days, that made us revive
memories of other voyages, when we had stout decks beneath our feet,
unlimited food at our command, and pleasant cabins for our ease. Now we
clung to a battered little boat, “alone, alone—all, all alone; alone on
a wide, wide sea.” So low in the water were we that each succeeding
swell cut off our view of the sky-line. We were a tiny speck in the
vast vista of the sea—the ocean that is open to all and merciful to
none, that threatens even when it seems to yield, and that is pitiless
always to weakness. For a moment the consciousness of the forces
arrayed against us would be almost overwhelming. Then hope and
confidence would rise again as our boat rose to a wave and tossed aside
the crest in a sparkling shower like the play of prismatic colours at
the foot of a waterfall. My double-barrelled gun and some cartridges
had been stowed aboard the boat as an emergency precaution against a
shortage of food, but we were not disposed to destroy our little
neighbours, the Cape pigeons, even for the sake of fresh meat. We might
have shot an albatross, but the wandering king of the ocean aroused in
us something of the feeling that inspired, too late, the Ancient
Mariner. So the gun remained among the stores and sleeping-bags in the
narrow quarters beneath our leaking deck, and the birds followed us
unmolested.
The eighth, ninth, and tenth days of the voyage had few features worthy
of special note. The wind blew hard during those days, and the strain
of navigating the boat was unceasing, but always we made some advance
towards our goal. No bergs showed on our horizon, and we knew that we
were clear of the ice-fields. Each day brought its little round of