Endurance Page 20
Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we should part
Nita, Juanita, lean thou on my heart.
Just two weeks later, on a rare day with sunshine, Wild finds me studying the horizon.
‘Hoyle, can you take a photograph of the men today? I’d like to have one shot of them all together before the boss comes back or, you know, if anything else happens. Even Hudson is up today.’
Wild wants a record of the souls for whom he is responsible.
The occasion causes some merriment, the incongruity of the dishevelled men gathering together in front of the Snuggery. Before I can stop them, a number have wiped their faces with snow. They would otherwise be unrecognisable. Only Blackborow is missing, as he remains laid up in his bunk. He declines an offer to be carried outside.
I sense the occasion will make an extraordinary photograph, but I only have the pocket Kodak to work with. The morning light reflecting off the sea ice behind me is intense, and the men are squinting and looking away. Their nervous smiles are for the camera only. None of them know if they will make it back home.
I bring the men together so they form a single dark amorphous mass in their grimy Burberry jackets and greasy woollen hats and mitts. There is massive reflection from the glacier in the background, too, but I persist, deliberately overexposing the shot so the men are not too dark. Afterwards, I get Orde-Lees to take a shot of me leaning against the Snuggery, one for posterity.
The sun does not stay around long. Within a few days we are being lashed by winds gusting up to eighty miles an hour from the west-south-west. The ice in the bay is blown offshore and the waves whip up and send a constant shower of sea spray across the spit. There is no shelter outside and we are driven into the Snuggery, where only a few can cluster around the bogie stove and the rest lie in sleeping bags all day, trying to get warm. The constant babble and arguments about space are quite draining. Even in the daytime, the light in the Snuggery is often too dark for reading. Our Encyclopaedia Britannica is down to five volumes: A, E, M, P and S. We have increased our general knowledge on automobiles, engraving, manufacturing, photography and sexual reproduction, but have many gaps in other areas.
The moisture and temperature changes in the Snuggery mean it is far from ideal for storing my cinefilms and photographic plates. And there is an ever-present risk of large waves flooding the spit and washing our settlement into the sea. So I select a spot halfway up Penguin Hill and dig a hole in which to store these valuables, along with the boss’s bag containing logbooks and scientific records. Orde-Lees takes a great interest and offers to help.
‘I daresay, Hurley, no one will ever find this if the boss doesn’t make it.’
‘I dunno about that, I’m not done for just yet. And whatever happens, I want my negatives to survive.’
‘Are they yours?’
‘Well, twenty percent of the earnings is mine, and in the long run the films are mine. I wouldn’t be here just for what the boss pays.’
‘I suppose I didn’t think about money when I agreed to come,’ Orde-Lees says thoughtfully.
‘Yeah, well, I’m here because his backers insisted he get me for the photographic work. It’s the only way they make a commercial return.’
‘Right now,’ says Orde-Lees, ‘any return would be acceptable to me. But I suppose you’re not an amateur; you’re more the professional, a commercial man.’
‘I am not interested in going broke, if that’s what you mean.’
The weather stays bad and there is nothing for it but to stay all day in one’s sleeping bag. The sailors on the mezzanine level are now rueing their choice of bunks, as they have no headroom and are unable to sit up during the day. This does not help their tempers. They complain bitterly and never give thanks they are still alive. Every day there is constant griping. At least the lack of exercise reduces our appetites.
Fuel for the stove is the problem. We are fast running out of blubber. We are down to using strips of penguin skins which, when heated, drop just enough melted blubber to keep a fire burning, despite everything being so damp. I have plenty of time in my sleeping bag to study the bogie stove and set about an innovation to capture more of the heat that disappears up the chimney. I mould an empty oil drum to make a horizontal extension to the flue which we can use as a second cooker. As a result, and with the shortage of blubber, we only run the stove in the morning and cook two meals of hoosh at the same time. We now have just one hot meal a day, and the evening meal we keep from freezing by shoving it in the end of someone’s sleeping bag.
The bogie stove requires constant attention to keep the fire burning—in order to save our last matches—and at the same time to avoid flare-ups. The penguin skins and blubber produce greasy smoke and fumes which make our eyes water and at times have everyone coughing and choking. Bowls and eating utensils have been lost and meals are eaten by hand or gobbled out of filthy mugs. The finnesko sleeping bags of those above me are rotting from exposure to saltwater, and there is a continuous shower from above of moulting reindeer hair. The hair, along with penguin fur and other rubbish, invariably gets into the hoosh.
Four weeks come and go without sign of Shackleton. No one really believed he would reach South Georgia in two weeks and be able to come straight back. Even if he made it to South Georgia, the whaling fleet are all steel-hulled and would be unable to risk coming into the pack ice that now surrounds Elephant Island. Snowfalls have completely covered the spit and the icefloe, so it is now impossible to see where is ocean and where is land. Other than our flagpole, which consists of an upended oar on Penguin Hill, our habitation is invisible from the sea. The thick sea ice portends badly for the supply of blubber from seals and penguins over winter. A few snow petrels are caught but are all feathers and bone.
June arrives and the temperature drops to twenty degrees below zero. Blizzards from the south hit without warning, as the cliffs prevent us seeing from where the weather comes.
The blizzards threaten to blow us off the spit. The sound of the canvas walls motoring noisily in the wind prevents conversation, and I lie in the darkness wondering when our shelter will be ripped to shreds.
Overnight the blizzard breaks up the icecap and drives it north. Groups of gentoo penguins are washed up on the spit, and in the morning a raiding party manages to kill over one hundred birds. Thank God we have fuel again. These gentoos are taller than Adelies and provide twice the blubber. Our spirits are lifted. Orde-Lees is ecstatic that Wild agreed not to put a halt to the slaughter. This, however, was on condition Orde-Lees himself gut every bird. This is a stinking filthy business, but Orde-Lees doesn’t seem to mind; he says the entrails keep his hands warm. The gullet and stomach are cut to remove any undigested fish, which add variety to our meals. Orde-Lees says with many of the penguins he finds their hearts still beating. It sickens me that they have not been killed properly.
‘On my arithmetic that is the one hundredth,’ I hear Orde-Lees call out, as with a thud another penguin carcass is tossed against the Snuggery. Skinning the carcass is also a dirty job, but Wild allows the men to do it in the entrance to the Snuggery to avoid frostbitten fingers.
Shortly afterwards, the flap opens and an exhausted Orde-Lees crawls inside, looking very pleased with himself. But his expression soon changes. ‘Oh my Lord, what is this then? Who has done this to my bed?’
There is silence.
‘What beastly scoundrels have left this bloody mess across my bedding?’
Those skinning the gentoos have been stacking the blubber strips on Orde-Lees’s sleeping bag.
‘Wild, who has done this? My bag was wet enough, but now it is putrid!’ Wild looks up but says nothing.
‘Who is responsible for fouling my bedding?’ Orde-Lees demands.
He is met with less-than-helpful responses.
‘If the smell keeps you awake, then the rest of us can sleep.’
‘Aye, and you wouldn’t want the feckin’ penguin blubber dirtyin’ the nice stone floor.’
‘I’ve sacked the colonel as store master,’ Wild tells me. ‘The crew think he is smuggling supplies. They say they’ve seen him taking things and heard him eating sugar in his bag at night.’
‘I can’t believe he’d be that foolish. The bastards should be happy if he’s not snoring.’
‘Well, I’m bringing in the sugar and milk powder and nut food to keep alongside me. Lees kept an inventory and there doesn’t seem to be anything missing. But I can’t change what the crew believe, so he’s sacked. It’s best for him really.’
A few days later, Wild, who is usually so calm, loses his temper with Orde-Lees over the bartering in food. This has become rife and is generally tolerated to deal with likes and dislikes. Orde-Lees, however, is a hoarder, and has built up a stash of goodies in the bottom of his sleeping bag. He now acts like the Bank of England. Stephenson is loud in his complaint that in exchange for a single bar of Streimer’s nut food he has bound himself to pay Orde-Lees six lumps of sugar every week until rescued or the sugar runs out. Streimer’s nut food is our most prized delicacy. It is a mixture of ground nuts, sesame oil and sweet nougat. Stephenson, having gluttonously eaten his nut food, is now moaning aloud that Shackleton won’t be returning at all and the deal unfairly favours Orde-Lees.
Wild will not allow any negative talk about Shackleton’s survival and gives Orde-Lees a blast.
‘Colonel, there is no such deal, you blasted Shylock. Why, it could be eight weeks before the boss returns, so you make fifty lumps of sugar and a man collapses from lack of carbohydrates! God knows McIlroy and Macklin have told us we all need sugar. The boys need their rations; that’s the end of this gambling with lives!’
Orde-Lees looks very put out.
Later, when we’re out walking the spit, Orde-Lees tells me the remaining supplies will soon be finished.
‘Wild keeps pandering to the sailing crews’ stomachs. They expect the same rations as if they were working, and they don’t have the sense to plan ahead for tomorrow, let alone for next week.’
‘I expect Frank is keen to keep up morale.’
‘There’s no morale. The day Wild runs out of food he runs out of authority. All those men do is lie about arguing. They are like caged animals living in the smell of their own fart.’
June is a dismal time for us. It is too cold to be outside for any length of time. The men spend the whole day lying in their sleeping bags. Relieving oneself outside is avoided. Instead, there is a two-gallon petrol can which most of the men urinate into. But the sailors are careless and unsanitary and spillages occur frequently. Wild marks a line above which the user is required to empty the can. The sailors know by sound when this point is to be reached, and then steadfastly abstain until someone can be prevailed upon to go outside.
For several hours each day there is light from the sun, but it is barely above the horizon and mostly hidden by clouds. In the Snuggery it is now too dark to read. I feel this hardship greatly. But it may be as well we do not see the squalor in which we live. One June afternoon, as I am lying in my bunk, I find myself staring distractedly at reindeer hairs which come wafting down in waves from the thwarts of the upturned boat above me. They are coming from Stephenson’s finnesko sleeping bag. It is then I see through the dim smoky light his greasy face, his open mouth, eyes shut and his head jerking back repeatedly. I should turn away, but I do not. I am amazed at his baseness and lack of shame. His eyes open and it is a few seconds before I realise he is staring straight at me. He reads the expression on my face. I look away, shaking my head in disgust.
Hours later I am outside on the spit when I am grabbed by the shoulder from behind. It is an angry red-faced Stephenson.
‘Yer feckin’ Australian convict bastard! Who d’ya tink y’are? Yer tink ya feckin’ better ’n us? Yer tink yer important? Yer carry on like yer one of the officers, but yer not. Yer no feckin’ scientist neither!’
I am taken off guard. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ is all I can manage.
‘Coom on then,’ he says, and pushes me back across the snow-crusted shingle.
I am shocked at his intensity. ‘Leave off,’ I respond, and this time he throws his left fist, which connects with my right shoulder.
‘Coom on,’ he says again.
I lose my temper then and we grapple, and I manage to club him around the ears. By now we have stumbled down to the bay ice and we each try to throw the other. We are both unfit and breathless and are locked together a full minute before I finally push him off and scramble to my feet.
‘You’re a bloody mongrel,’ I call out as I stride away.
Wild’s orders are that every man except those invalided must have an hour’s exercise outside each day. Wild and I have just turned at the end of the spit on one of our many laps when we are joined by McIlroy and Macklin.
‘Frank,’ says McIlroy, ‘the gangrene markings on Blackborow are quite clear now. We should wait no longer. Blackborow has asked us to operate, says he feels up to it.’
‘Could he wait just a week or two? The boss promised he’d get him to a hospital.’
‘Macklin and I think he will have more chance if we amputate now, here, in the Snuggery. Frank, he may not make it back anyhow. But he won’t last the winter unless the gangrenous tissues are removed now.’
‘Do you have what’s needed?’
‘There’s enough chloroform to knock him out for an hour, and we can boil up the instruments. But we want the whole mob out of the Snuggery. Hudson and Greenstreet will have to stay inside. Hurley, can you work on the stove to keep the temperature up without smoking us out? It has to be warm enough so chloroform will vaporise, at least fifty degrees.’
In the Snuggery an operating table is constructed out of Streimer’s nut food boxes and covered in blankets that don’t look too clean. Blackborow is lifted up and given a wash. He is just a young boy and this morning he is excited and won’t stop talking.
‘Do you think the Streimer’s bars really are German? Not very patriotic, is it, the boss bringing so much of it? I like it anyhow, German or not.’
Meanwhile, I am stoking the fire and selecting the best pieces of penguin skin I can find, each with just a good quarter-inch thickness of blubber. The men have all left now to find a cave out of the rain. McIlroy and Macklin are in their undershirts, which are not exactly clean, but are at least free of guano and greasy reindeer hair. Wild stays to lend a hand. I have had the medical instruments boiling in the same pot as yesterday’s hoosh. Not long after arriving on Elephant Island it became necessary for our only saucepan to be used as a commode for invalids.
Macklin does the chloroform and hovers around Blackborow’s head, listening to his laboured breathing and watching the coat draped across his chest rise and fall. By the flickering light of a hurricane lamp, McIlroy starts methodically to cut and peel back strips of skin from the toes of Blackborow’s foot. McIlroy is good with the scalpel and I watch it all very closely. He removes all the toes on the left foot and after two hours is stitching across the wound. Blackborow wakens and obviously has pain as he grimaces and smiles at the same time. They put him back to sleep with morphine. For once it is peaceful in the Snuggery, and Wild and I are in no hurry to let the others know they can return.
Midwinter’s Day arrives, and there is nostalgic talk about last year’s festivities on Endurance, the variety of delicacies and bottles of rum. We were stuck fast in ice, but at least with a proper roof over our heads. This year we make do with mashing up the dwindling supply of Huntley & Palmers wholemeal biscuits with the now-mouldy Streimer’s nut food to make a pudding. To wash it down, Wild has requisitioned the remainder of Clark’s preserving solution. Clark had this for biological specimens, usually deceased, on which the ninety-percent-proof methylated spirit could do no further harm. Wild dispenses it with a little sugar and water for his toasts to ‘the boss and crew
of James Caird’, ‘the King’ and, of course, ‘wives and sweethearts—though,’ he adds, ‘I have neither.’
Then our concert begins, with each man sitting upright in his sleeping bag and singing or reciting some doggerel he has memorised for the occasion. Orde-Lees bears the brunt of the wit. Macklin, a learned doctor, is surprisingly vicious towards him. The two had fought over space in the Snuggery and had to be separated. Macklin reads aloud a cruel verse he has composed, ‘The Colonel’s Lament’. If it were me I would not have let Macklin finish, but Orde-Lees just shakes his head and mutters, ‘Oh, dear me.’ As it happens, I have composed a piece which makes fun of Orde-Lees for his snoring and Macklin for his farting, but at least I have been even-handed.
Despite the abuse, Orde-Lees does nothing to curb his night-time snoring. He is regularly kicked and punched awake from his noisy slumbers, and I confess I have thrown stones at him if the tempest fails to drown him out. One evening Wild has to intervene before violence erupts.
‘That’s enough. Now, Colonel, here is how we restore peace. In the evening you will wear this rope looped around your arm. Hurley will help me rig up some eyelets along the roof to my bunk. If you are causing offence, I will pull until you stop. If it turns out you are not the offender, then you are relieved of the rope for the rest of the night.’
Amazingly, Orde-Lees agrees to this and the rope is fitted into place, but still this does not satisfy the sailors. ‘Put it round his feckin’ neck!’ they cry.
A few days later we all get a fright as the winter storms worsen and waves come licking at the edge of the Snuggery. The saltspray permeates our clothing and bedding. The storms however do bring large numbers of gentoo penguins washed up on the spit. The colonel is quickly outside to lead a party of those with a stomach for slaughter. I find myself increasingly reluctant to take up arms against the hapless penguins and seals despite our dire necessity. One morning the squalls are particularly unpleasant. Huge white rollers rush up on the spit and eighty or more gentoos are unceremoniously and bruisingly bundled and bounced off bergs and rocks and tossed up on the shore. When their bellies hit shingle they leap to their feet and with barely a shake they nonchalantly waddle to higher ground. Within several minutes Orde Lees is leading a party along the water’s edge to discourage the gentoos from returning to the surf. The gentoos reach the end of the spit and rock hop up the side of Penguin Hill. The men, weapons in hand stretch in a band between the gentoos and the sea. By now half the gentoos have been slain and lie where they have been felled. Lees and his party are now confident they have cut off the remainder. There is no rush. The gentoos with little complaint retreat up Penguin Hill. The men take time to enjoy the antics of the gentoos. Despite being exhausted from their long sea journey they waddle and hop and only occasionally stumble as they ascend the icy rocks and snow of Penguin Hill. The killing pauses as the men slowly converge on the penguins at the crest of the hill. Up here the wind is stronger and snow and sleet lash the men who pull down their hats and balaclavas. They do not try to talk above the fury of the storm. Soon the men can see over the crest to the south where Penguin Hill drops in a steep cliff not far from the Snuggery. In the background through the gloom, the forbidding spires and crags of Elephant Island are visible. The men look down at their feet where the gentoos are now huddled several deep along the edge of the cliff. The gentoos look around, curious of the strangers crowding them. The penguins converse and show no fear. Then, first one and then another, leap off the steep cliff without, or so it would seem, any thought for their safety. The other gentoos all follow. There are men waiting at the bottom of the cliff. Most of the gentoos are dead or unconscious. The men finish them off.