South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
relief that we alone could secure for them. Their plight was worse than
ours. We must push on somehow. Several days must elapse before our
strength would be sufficiently recovered to allow us to row or sail the
last nine miles up to the head of the bay. In the meantime we could
make what preparations were possible and dry our clothes by taking
advantage of every scrap of heat from the fires we lit for the cooking
of our meals. We turned in early that night, and I remember that I
dreamed of the great wave and aroused my companions with a shout of
warning as I saw with half-awakened eyes the towering cliff on the
opposite side of the cove. Shortly before midnight a gale sprang up
suddenly from the north-east with rain and sleet showers. It brought
quantities of glacier-ice into the cove, and by 2 a.m. (May 12) our
little harbour was filled with ice, which surged to and fro in the
swell and pushed its way on to the beach. We had solid rock beneath our
feet and could watch without anxiety. When daylight came rain was
falling heavily, and the temperature was the highest we had experienced
for many months. The icicles overhanging our cave were melting down in
streams and we had to move smartly when passing in and out lest we
should be struck by falling lumps. A fragment weighing fifteen or
twenty pounds crashed down while we were having breakfast. We found
that a big hole had been burned in the bottom of Worsley’s reindeer
sleeping-bag during the night. Worsley had been awakened by a burning
sensation in his feet, and had asked the men near him if his bag was
all right; they looked and could see nothing wrong. We were all
superficially frostbitten about the feet, and this condition caused the
extremities to burn painfully, while at the same time sensation was
lost in the skin. Worsley thought that the uncomfortable heat of his
feet was due to the frost-bites, and he stayed in his bag and presently
went to sleep again. He discovered when he turned out in the morning
that the tussock-grass which we had laid on the floor of the cave had
smouldered outwards from the fire and had actually burned a large hole
in the bag beneath his feet. Fortunately, his feet were not harmed.
Our party spent a quiet day, attending to clothing and gear, checking
stores, eating and resting. Some more of the young albatrosses made a
noble end in our pot. The birds were nesting on a small plateau above
the right-hand end of our beach. We had previously discovered that when
we were landing from the boat on the night of May 10 we had lost the
rudder. The _James Caird_ had been bumping heavily astern as we were
scrambling ashore, and evidently the rudder was then knocked off. A
careful search of the beach and the rocks within our reach failed to
reveal the missing article. This was a serious loss, even if the voyage
to the head of the sound could be made in good weather. At dusk the ice
in the cove was rearing and crashing on the beach. It had forced up a
ridge of stones close to where the _James Caird_ lay at the edge of the
tussock-grass. Some pieces of ice were driven right up to the canvas
wall at the front of our cave. Fragments lodged within two feet of
Vincent, who had the lowest sleeping-place, and within four feet of our
fire. Crean and McCarthy had brought down six more of the young
albatrosses in the afternoon, so we were well supplied with fresh food.
The air temperature that night probably was not lower than 38° or 40°
Fahr., and we were rendered uncomfortable in our cramped sleeping
quarters by the unaccustomed warmth. Our feelings towards our
neighbours underwent a change. When the temperature was below 20° Fahr,
we could not get too close to one another—every man wanted to cuddle
against his neighbour; but let the temperature rise a few degrees and
the warmth of another man’s body ceased to be a blessing. The ice and
the waves had a voice of menace that night, but I heard it only in my
dreams.
The bay was still filled with ice on the morning of Saturday, May 13,
but the tide took it all away in the afternoon. Then a strange thing
happened. The rudder, with all the broad Atlantic to sail in and the
coasts of two continents to search for a resting-place, came bobbing
back into our cove. With anxious eyes we watched it as it advanced,
receded again, and then advanced once more under the capricious
influence of wind and wave. Nearer and nearer it came as we waited on
the shore, oars in hand, and at last we were able to seize it. Surely a
remarkable salvage! The day was bright and clear; our clothes were
drying and our strength was returning. Running water made a musical
sound down the tussock slope and among the boulders. We carried our
blankets up the hill and tried to dry them in the breeze 300 ft. above
sea-level. In the afternoon we began to prepare the _James Caird_ for
the journey to the head of King Haakon Bay. A noon observation on this
day gave our latitude as 54° 10´ 47´´ S., but according to the German
chart the position should have been 54° 12´ S. Probably Worsley’s
observation was the more accurate. We were able to keep the fire alight
until we went to sleep that night, for while climbing the rocks above
the cove I had seen at the foot of a cliff a broken spar, which had
been thrown up by the waves. We could reach this spar by climbing down
the cliff, and with a reserve supply of fuel thus in sight we could
afford to burn the fragments of the _James Caird’s_ topsides more
freely.
During the morning of this day (May 13) Worsley and I tramped across
the hills in a north-easterly direction with the object of getting a
view of the sound and possibly gathering some information that would be
useful to us in the next stage of our journey. It was exhausting work,
but after covering about 2½ miles in two hours, we were able to look
east, up the bay. We could not see very much of the country that we
would have to cross in order to reach the whaling-station on the other
side of the island. We had passed several brooks and frozen tarns, and
at a point where we had to take to the beach on the shore of the sound
we found some wreckage—an 18-ft. pine-spar (probably part of a ship’s
topmast), several pieces of timber, and a little model of a ship’s
hull, evidently a child’s toy. We wondered what tragedy that pitiful
little plaything indicated. We encountered also some gentoo penguins
and a young sea-elephant, which Worsley killed.
When we got back to the cave at 3 p.m., tired, hungry, but rather
pleased with ourselves, we found a splendid meal of stewed albatross
chicken waiting for us. We had carried a quantity of blubber and the
sea-elephant’s liver in our blouses, and we produced our treasures as a
surprise for the men. Rough climbing on the way back to camp had nearly
persuaded us to throw the stuff away, but we had held on (regardless of
the condition of our already sorely tried clothing), and had our reward
at the camp. The long bay had been a magnificent sight, even to eyes
that had dwelt on grandeur long enough and were hungry for the simple,
familiar things of everyday life. Its green-blue waters were being
beaten to fury by the north-westerly gale. The mountains, “stern peaks
that dared the stars,” peered through the mists, and between them huge
glaciers poured down from the great ice-slopes and fields that lay
behind. We counted twelve glaciers and heard every few minutes the
reverberating roar caused by masses of ice calving from the parent
streams.
On May 14 we made our preparations for an early start on the following
day if the weather held fair. We expected to be able to pick up the
remains of the sea-elephant on our way up the sound. All hands were
recovering from the chafing caused by our wet clothes during the boat
journey. The insides of our legs had suffered severely, and for some
time after landing in the cove we found movement extremely
uncomfortable. We paid our last visit to the nests of the albatrosses,
which were situated on a little undulating plateau above the cave amid
tussocks, snow-patches, and little frozen tarns. Each nest consisted of
a mound over a foot high of tussock-grass, roots, and a little earth.
The albatross lays one egg and very rarely two. The chicks, which are
hatched in January, are fed on the nest by the parent birds for almost
seven months before they take to the sea and fend for themselves. Up to
four months of age the chicks are beautiful white masses of downy
fluff, but when we arrived on the scene their plumage was almost
complete. Very often one of the parent birds was on guard near the
nest. We did not enjoy attacking these birds, but our hunger knew no
law. They tasted so very good and assisted our recuperation to such an
extent that each time we killed one of them we felt a little less
remorseful.
May 15 was a great day. We made our hoosh at 7.30 a.m. Then we loaded
up the boat and gave her a flying launch down the steep beach into the
surf. Heavy rain had fallen in the night and a gusty north-westerly
wind was now blowing, with misty showers. The _James Caird_ headed to
the sea as if anxious to face the battle of the waves once more. We
passed through the narrow mouth of the cove with the ugly rocks and
waving kelp close on either side, turned to the east, and sailed
merrily up the bay as the sun broke through the mists and made the
tossing waters sparkle around us. We were a curious-looking party on
that bright morning, but we were feeling happy. We even broke into
song, and, but for our Robinson Crusoe appearance, a casual observer
might have taken us for a picnic party sailing in a Norwegian fiord or
one of the beautiful sounds of the west coast of New Zealand. The wind
blew fresh and strong, and a small sea broke on the coast as we
advanced. The surf was sufficient to have endangered the boat if we had
attempted to land where the carcass of the sea-elephant was lying, so
we decided to go on to the head of the bay without risking anything,
particularly as we were likely to find sea-elephants on the upper
beaches. The big creatures have a habit of seeking peaceful quarters
protected from the waves. We had hopes, too, of finding penguins. Our
expectation as far as the sea-elephants were concerned was not at
fault. We heard the roar of the bulls as we neared the head of the bay,
and soon afterwards saw the great unwieldy forms of the beasts lying on
a shelving beach towards the bay-head. We rounded a high, glacier-worn
bluff on the north side, and at 12.30 p.m. we ran the boat ashore on a
low beach of sand and pebbles, with tussock growing above high-water
mark. There were hundreds of sea-elephants lying about, and our
anxieties with regard to food disappeared. Meat and blubber enough to
feed our party for years was in sight. Our landing-place was about a
mile and a half west of the north-east corner of the bay. Just east of
us was a glacier-snout ending on the beach but giving a passage towards
the head of the bay, except at high water or when a very heavy surf was
running. A cold, drizzling rain had begun to fall, and we provided
ourselves with shelter as quickly as possible. We hauled the _James
Caird_ up above highwater mark and turned her over just to the lee or
east side of the bluff. The spot was separated from the mountain-side
by a low morainic bank, rising twenty or thirty feet above sea-level.
Soon we had converted the boat into a very comfortable cabin _à la_
Peggotty, turfing it round with tussocks, which we dug up with knives.
One side of the _James Caird_ rested on stones so as to afford a low
entrance, and when we had finished she looked as though she had grown
there. McCarthy entered into this work with great spirit. A
sea-elephant provided us with fuel and meat, and that evening found a