South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917
hurried the party aboard with all possible speed, taking also the
records of the Expedition and essential portions of equipment.
Everybody was aboard the _Yelcho_ within an hour, and we steamed north
at the little steamer’s best speed. The ice was open still, and nothing
worse than an expanse of stormy ocean separated us from the South
American coast.
During the run up to Punta Arenas I heard Wild’s story, and blessed
again the cheerfulness and resource that had served the party so well
during four and a half months of privation. The twenty-two men on
Elephant Island were just at the end of their resources when the
_Yelcho_ reached them. Wild had husbanded the scanty stock of food as
far as possible and had fought off the devils of despondency and
despair on that little sand-spit, where the party had a precarious
foothold between the grim ice-fields and the treacherous, ice-strewn
sea. The pack had opened occasionally, but much of the time the way to
the north had been barred. The _Yelcho_ had arrived at the right
moment. Two days earlier she could not have reached the island, and a
few hours later the pack may have been impenetrable again. Wild had
reckoned that help would come in August, and every morning he had
packed his kit, in cheerful anticipation that proved infectious, as I
have no doubt it was meant to be. One of the party to whom I had said
“Well, you all were packed up ready,” replied, “You see, boss, Wild
never gave up hope, and whenever the sea was at all clear of ice he
rolled up his sleeping-bag and said to all hands, ‘Roll up your
sleeping-bags, boys; the boss may come to-day.’” And so it came to
pass that we suddenly came out of the fog, and, from a black outlook,
in an hour all were in safety homeward bound. The food was eked out
with seal and penguin meat, limpets, and seaweed. Seals had been
scarce, but the supply of penguins had held out fairly well during the
first three months. The men were down to the last Bovril ration, the
only form of hot drink they had, and had scarcely four days’ food in
hand at the time of the rescue. The camp was in constant danger of
being buried by the snow, which drifted heavily from the heights
behind, and the men moved the accumulations with what implements they
could provide. There was danger that the camp would become completely
invisible from the sea, so that a rescue party might look for it in
vain.
“It had been arranged that a gun should be fired from the relief ship
when she got near the island,” said Wild. “Many times when the glaciers
were ‘calving,’ and chunks fell off with a report like a gun, we
thought that it was the real thing, and after a time we got to distrust
these signals. As a matter of fact, we saw the _Yelcho_ before we heard
any gun. It was an occasion one will not easily forget. We were just
assembling for lunch to the call of ‘Lunch O!’ and I was serving out
the soup, which was particularly good that day, consisting of boiled
seal’s backbone, limpets, and seaweed, when there was another hail from
Marston of ‘Ship O!’ Some of the men thought it was ‘Lunch O!’ over
again, but when there was another yell from Marston lunch had no
further attractions. The ship was about a mile and a half away and
steaming past us. A smoke-signal was the agreed sign from the shore,
and, catching up somebody’s coat that was lying about, I struck a pick
into a tin of kerosene kept for the purpose, poured it over the coat,
and set it alight. It flared instead of smoking; but that didn’t
matter, for you had already recognized the spot where you had left us
and the _Yelcho_ was turning in.”
We encountered bad weather on the way back to Punta Arenas, and the
little _Yelcho_ laboured heavily; but she had light hearts aboard. We
entered the Straits of Magellan on September 3 and reached Rio Secco at
8 a.m. I went ashore, found a telephone, and told the Governor and my
friends at Punta Arenas that the men were safe. Two hours later we were
at Punta Arenas, where we were given a welcome none of us is likely to
forget. The Chilian people were no less enthusiastic than the British
residents. The police had been instructed to spread the news that the
_Yelcho_ was coming with the rescued men, and lest the message should
fail to reach some people, the fire-alarm had been rung. The whole
populace appeared to be in the streets. It was a great reception, and
with the strain of long, anxious months lifted at last, we were in a
mood to enjoy it.
The next few weeks were crowded ones, but I will not attempt here to
record their history in detail. I received congratulations and messages
of friendship and good cheer from all over the world, and my heart went
out to the good people who had remembered my men and myself in the
press of terrible events on the battlefields. The Chilian Government
placed the _Yelcho_ at my disposal to take the men up to Valparaiso and
Santiago. We reached Valparaiso on September 27. Everything that could
swim in the way of a boat was out to meet us, the crews of Chilian
warships were lined up, and at least thirty thousand thronged the
streets. I lectured in Santiago on the following evening for the
British Red Cross and a Chilian naval charity. The Chilian flag and the
Union Jack were draped together, the band played the Chilian national
anthem, “God Save the King,” and the “Marseillaise,” and the Chilian
Minister for Foreign Affairs spoke from the platform and pinned an
Order on my coat. I saw the President and thanked him for the help that
he had given a British expedition. His Government had spent £4000 on
coal alone. In reply he recalled the part that British sailors had
taken in the making of the Chilian Navy.
The Chilian Railway Department provided a special train to take us
across the Andes, and I proceeded to Montevideo in order to thank
personally the President and Government of Uruguay for the help they
had given generously in the earlier relief voyages. We were entertained
royally at various spots _en route_. We went also to Buenos Ayres on a
brief call. Then we crossed the Andes again. I had made arrangements by
this time for the men and the staff to go to England. All hands were
keen to take their places in the Empire’s fighting forces. My own
immediate task was the relief of the marooned Ross Sea party, for news
had come to me of the _Aurora’s_ long drift in the Ross Sea and of her
return in a damaged condition to New Zealand. Worsley was to come with
me. We hurried northwards via Panama, steamship and train companies
giving us everywhere the most cordial and generous assistance, and
caught at San Francisco a steamer that would get us to New Zealand at
the end of November. I had been informed that the New Zealand
Government was making arrangements for the relief of the Ross Sea
party, but my information was incomplete, and I was very anxious to be
on the spot myself as quickly as possible.
CHAPTER XII
ELEPHANT ISLAND
The twenty-two men who had been left behind on Elephant Island were
under the command of Wild, in whom I had absolute confidence, and the
account of their experiences during the long four and a half months’
wait while I was trying to get help to them, I have secured from their
various diaries, supplemented by details which I obtained in
conversation on the voyage back to civilization.
The first consideration, which was even more important than that of
food, was to provide shelter. The semi-starvation during the drift on
the ice-floe, added to the exposure in the boats, and the inclemencies
of the weather encountered after our landing on Elephant Island, had
left its mark on a good many of them. Rickenson, who bore up gamely to
the last, collapsed from heart-failure. Blackborrow and Hudson could
not move. All were frost-bitten in varying degrees and their clothes,
which had been worn continuously for six months, were much the worse
for wear. The blizzard which sprang up the day that we landed at Cape
Wild lasted for a fortnight, often blowing at the rate of seventy to
ninety miles an hour, and occasionally reaching even higher figures.
The tents which had lasted so well and endured so much were torn to
ribbons, with the exception of the square tent occupied by Hurley,
James, and Hudson. Sleeping-bags and clothes were wringing wet, and the
physical discomforts were tending to produce acute mental depression.
The two remaining boats had been turned upside down with one gunwale
resting on the snow, and the other raised about two feet on rocks and
cases, and under these the sailors and some of the scientists, with the
two invalids, Rickenson and Blackborrow, found head-cover at least.
Shelter from the weather and warmth to dry their clothes was
imperative, so Wild hastened the excavation of the ice-cave in the
slope which had been started before I left.
The high temperature, however, caused a continuous stream of water to
drip from the roof and sides of the ice-cave, and as with twenty-two
men living in it the temperature would be practically always above
freezing, there would have been no hope of dry quarters for them there.
Under the direction of Wild they, therefore, collected some big flat
stones, having in many cases to dig down under the snow which was
covering the beach, and with these they erected two substantial walls
four feet high and nineteen feet apart.
“We are all ridiculously weak, and this part of the work was
exceedingly laborious and took us more than twice as long as it would
have done had we been in normal health. Stones that we could easily
have lifted at other times we found quite beyond our capacity, and it
needed two or three of us to carry some that would otherwise have been
one man’s load. Our difficulties were added to by the fact that most of
the more suitable stones lay at the farther end of the spit, some one
hundred and fifty yards away. Our weakness is best compared with that
which one experiences on getting up from a long illness; one ‘feels’
well, but physically enervated.
“The site chosen for the hut was the spot where the stove had been
originally erected on the night of our arrival. It lay between two
large boulders, which, if they would not actually form the walls of the
hut, would at least provide a valuable protection from the wind.
Further protection was provided to the north by a hill called Penguin
Hill at the end of the spit. As soon as the walls were completed and
squared off, the two boats were laid upside down on them side by side.
The exact adjustment of the boats took some time, but was of paramount
importance if our structure was to be the permanent affair that we
hoped it would be. Once in place they were securely chocked up and
lashed down to the rocks. The few pieces of wood that we had were laid
across from keel to keel, and over this the material of one of the torn
tents was spread and secured with guys to the rocks. The walls were
ingeniously contrived and fixed up by Marston. First he cut the now
useless tents into suitable lengths; then he cut the legs of a pair of
seaboots into narrow strips, and using these in much the same way that
the leather binding is put round the edge of upholstered chairs, he
nailed the tent-cloth all round the insides of the outer gunwales of
the two boats in such a way that it hung down like a valance to the
ground, where it was secured with spars and oars. A couple of
overlapping blankets made the door, superseded later by a sack-mouth
door cut from one of the tents. This consisted of a sort of tube of
canvas sewn on to the tent-cloth, through which the men crawled in or
out, tying it up as one would the mouth of a sack as soon as the man