Endurance Read online

  It is now December and the sun is still shining at midnight. It is disorientating not to have darkness call an end to our daily sledging efforts. As we climb the plateau, the ice has changed and is here deeply furrowed by the wind. We pass over undulations gradually leading to the top of a rise, only to see the next ridge several hundred yards away. Time and time again the sledge slides sidewards and turns over. Righting the sledge necessitates removing most of the load and saps our energy.

  On 3 December we find ourselves in a valley running east-south-east. Facing us are three large mounds of ice which rise up a few hundred feet. As we drag the sledge over the southern edge of the valley we see a maze of large crevasses, between which are lengthy ramps of accumulated ice. The crevasses are bridged with snow. The snow bridges appear solid, though many have sunk below the lip of the crevasse. Bage names this area ‘the Nodules’. This evening at camp we raise our flags to celebrate the dowager queen’s birthday and and Bob and I use the occasion to light up a cigar each.

  As we sledge south from the Nodules the next day we are unable to avoid a series of crevasses. Again it is my day up front. After checking our leads, harnesses and quick releases, I extend my lead rope so as to be fifteen yards ahead of my companions. My job is to select the more reliable-looking snow bridges to cross. Having chosen a route, it is up to me to test each snow bridge with my own weight. Bage instructs me to do some stomping and jumping as I cross. Some of these crevasses are over twenty yards wide in parts, although we always find narrower sections to attempt our crossings. Stopping on a snow bridge is forbidden. When I do look down, the crevasses are quite beautiful, with shimmering ice crystals and luminous blue walls dropping into black nothingness. I lead the way across more than twenty of these snow bridges before the day is out. Three or four times the snow bridge collapses, dropping me for a nerve-racking split second before my harness pulls me up against the crevasse wall. Above my head the rope cuts through the soft snow like a fretsaw. Inside the crevasse I spin slowly in the harness as I listen for the voices of my companions. Bage and Azzi pull me back to the surface and, after shaking myself off like a dog to remove the ice from my clothes, I scout for a better option, then try again.

  We continue further south across the 69th parallel. The weather improves a little, but the surface is worse than ever. It is like a turbulent choppy ocean has been snap frozen and my feet slide on the hard icy surface of each little slope. My shins and knees take a hammering and we are fearful of breaking a bone. The sledge, meanwhile, tilts and drops and jars its way over these corrugations. Azzi takes observations with the dip circle, a vertically held compass, which shows our magnetic dip to be eighty-nine degrees, just one degree away from the South Magnetic Pole.

  Each day now we are conscious we must average ten miles a day if we are to achieve the distance planned. It is extremely disheartening when this proves beyond us. On days I am leading I regularly lift off my goggles to see ahead and keep up our pace, but my eyes are pelted with drift and become so sore they start to close over. Eventually I can only look down at my feet with just one eye open and an occasional upwards glance. We are now accustomed to walking on frozen feet, our mitts and woollen helmets frozen stiff and a mask of ice beneath our Burberry hoods. Sweat makes dry clothing an impossibility. My full-time preoccupations are food and maintaining body heat. I constantly weigh up whether the trauma of removing a cold damp item and the time taken to put on another slightly less damp item will improve my overall warmth.

  We are smarter now about changing and packing. When we remove our wet Burberrys inside the tent, we stuff the arms and legs with equally damp socks and other gear before the Burberrys freeze solid. This way we can put them on the next day without having to thaw them first. Similarly, in the evening we stack our harnesses and straps one inside the other so they are pre-frozen into shape for putting on the next morning. The socks and gear we remove in the morning from our Burberrys we shove into the opening of our sleeping bags so that night there is a readymade hole we can fit our legs into. Getting my legs all the way down through the frozen twisted knots of the bag can sometimes take an hour. Once in our sleeping bags we literally shiver to warm up. The hoosh cheers us up enormously, but afterwards I am still hungry. I am ravenous for steak, onions and potatoes. Once we have warmed up, we talk about food and our favourite meals. I have had to stop making diary entries that ‘today was the worst’. There has always been a worse.

  Azzi needs to conduct a full twenty-four hours’ continuous magnetic observation. To do this properly we dig a cavern in the ice eight feet square and five feet deep. We put down a canvas floor then lie in our bags, jammed together for warmth, with our frozen Burberrys above keeping off as much snow as possible. We take turns watching the instruments and otherwise shiver and try to sleep. It is much colder than in the tent, but Azzi gets his readings. We are encrusted by a lid of snow and ice and joke about whether this is how we will finish up. We are very glad the next day to leave our sarcophagus, even if it does mean a return to sledging.

  At two hundred miles from Commonwealth Bay, we overhaul our gear and prepare for a last dash south. We establish a depot of food stores and equipment not required for the next few weeks. Our sledge weight drops to two hundred pounds. We leave a snow mound some nine feet high with a black flag above. We call this Lucky Depot. We then head south for several miles, and when we make camp Lucky Depot is still in sight. Our altitude is now five thousand feet, but the way south is still an ascent.

  Our days elapse with relentless pulling of the sledge with our heads down and our faces iced into our hoods. Speaking is an effort with our lips split and faces numb from the stinging drift, our throats invariably dry as we have no way of keeping water from freezing once we are underway. Sucking small amounts of snow is not enough to help. Even with companions it is lonely for most of the day. I wonder as to the significance of any scientific work in this miserable place. Despite my initial excitement at exploring this unknown continent, I am now questioning if there is any point to our southward march. The world already has its Antarctic heroes with Scott and Shackleton. Will anyone really care what is achieved by us, wandering unseen and often unseeing through this alien land? There are no Arcadian pleasures to be had in this hellish place. There seems little value to a photographic record of the barren Antarctic plateau. And, overwhelmingly, it is easier here to die than to live.

  After a number of miserable days, 16 December proves to be a fine day and greatly lifts our spirits. We do two days of over fourteen miles each, and again have the chance to dry our clothing and sleeping bags. But despite the sun the temperature drops to fifty degrees below freezing. The sastrugi here stand up to five feet in height and are maybe twenty to thirty feet long. These sentinels of the blizzard are carved into ghostly shapes that now catch the pale light, but for half the year sit perched like gargoyles in the darkness.

  We enjoy a third day of sunshine. The wind stops completely and again we become so hot sledging we strip down to our undergarments. Goggles are essential to cope with the glare. Our faces, pinched by frostbite, are like blackened and cracked leather. Our beards and hair thaw out on these days. There is a decent ration of congealed biscuit in my beard which can now be picked out without pulling the hair from its roots. When I look at Bob, who is normally such a neat character, I can only imagine the appearance of my own thick wiry hair, which is almost impossible to disentangle from my clothing. Meanwhile, without the howling wind our surroundings are even more eerie, and again I have the sensation our slow progress across the planet is being observed. I sense shadowy figures off to one side, but when I swing my head to see there is nothing. When we pause there is absolute silence across the lonely plateau, broken only by our exhaling. And as we start up there is just the squeak of the wooden runners on snow and the crunching of our own steps.

  We continue to haul up undulating slopes and on 20 December, with a much lighter sledge, we do fifteen miles. On 21 December our sledge meter indi
cates we have travelled three hundred and one miles from Commonwealth Bay. We are at latitude 70.37. We have climbed to just under six thousand feet. Ahead of us the land continues to rise.

  Azzi does a further set of readings. I crouch alongside him, writing up the figures he reads off to me. It is twenty-five degrees below freezing. I am careful not to breathe on the logbook as condensation makes an immediate film of ice on paper which pencil will not penetrate; ink pens are, of course, useless.

  Bob becomes impatient and makes his way over to us. ‘What is it, Azzi? What’s the dip?’

  Azzi is quiet for a moment. ‘Magnetic dip is at eighty-nine degrees, forty-three and a half minutes. That’s just a quarter of a degree off magnetic south.’ He pauses, then continues, ‘Right now, we are within forty-five miles of the South Magnetic Pole.

  Bob thinks for a moment, then says, ‘We’ve already gone past our rations provision for the outwards journey. Time to turn around, lads, and make for home. What do you say, Azzi?’

  ‘Another day’s tempting, but there’s no guarantee a further day of sledging will make any difference. Bob, we are the closest anyone has ever been. We are certainly closer than the Doctor got in ’09.’

  ‘The Doc’s orders were to bring you fellows back alive. It’s taken us forty days to get here and that leaves us only twenty days to get back. I’m marking this place on my map “Turn Back Camp”. Frank, you’d better get the camera out.’

  I take our flags—the Union Jack and the Commonwealth of Australia Ensign—off the sledge and plant them firmly alongside each other in front of the tent. As explained by Azzi, ninety degrees of dip means the flags and I are vertically aligned with the geomagnetic field lines that point to the North Magnetic Pole.

  ‘Three cheers for the King!’ cries Bage. My camera records the occasion. There is not much to see in a photograph of the South Magnetic Pole—flags, men, sledge and ice—but it tells a story.

  I am wistful as to what lies beyond the furthest line of ridge but another part of me feels we are a very long way from safety. We are now to turn our backs on the frozen heart of this continent, the home of the blizzard, and flee to the coast before rations run out. Of course the great compensations of turning for home are that it is a gradual descent and the wind will be on our backs. We hoist a canvas sail on the sledge and are soon on our way north.

  Our sledge meter has had such a rough trot that Bob decides to remove it. The measuring wheel has only a few spokes left and we will need the meter later when we have to rely on dead reckoning. With fifty square feet of canvas and thirty-mile-an-hour winds, we find our sledge running faster than we can control and soon have to reef the sail. Even then we cover over eighteen miles our first full day and twenty miles the next. On Christmas Eve we keep sledging till well after 8 p.m. We have been talking of a special Christmas feast, but Bob is sensibly concerned about rations and decides to postpone this until we reach the depot at Lucky Camp.

  Christmas Day is particularly hard as we find ourselves in piecrust snow which holds our weight in sections then, without warning, collapses beneath us so we are dropped to our knees. The wind shifts to our starboard quarter, causing the sledge to skid sideways and making it hard to stay on track.

  By 27 December we know we should have reached the depot, but by lunchtime there is still no sign of it. The three of us stare through thick drift to where the horizon should be, looking for a snow mound. Mid-afternoon comes and visibility remains poor. Without the sledge meter we have no way of knowing if we have overrun the depot. None of us speak; the consequences are unthinkable. Then suddenly the depot looms in front of us. We are overcome with relief.

  I am commissioned by Bob to prepare the postponed Christmas feast, ‘to lift our spirits’, while he and Azzi take observations. With the depot found and the threat of starvation gone, my confidence is restored, and I know Bob wants me to make a special effort. For a start, I decide to clean the Nansen cooker and tableware—namely the same three mugs which serve for every meal. Fresh snow and a knife help me to scrape out the glutinous food scraps and reindeer hair (from our sleeping bags) stuck firmly in the corners of the cooking pot. My inventory of ingredients can be numbered on one hand, but despite this I write an elaborate menu card.

  Hors d’oeuvres are my Angels on Gliders, which look a lot like single raisins on fried bars of chocolate. These are a hit. The entree is biscuit fried in Sledging Suet. For the main course I serve Frizzled Pemmican on Fried Biscuit, which Bage remarks is vaguely reminiscent of the entree. To satisfy all tastes, I serve my pièce de résistance, an extra thick and greasy Antarctic sledging ration.

  ‘And now, chums,’ I say, ‘it wouldn’t be Christmas dinner without plum pudding for dessert.’

  ‘Hang on,’ says Bage suspiciously. ‘We haven’t been lugging tins of plum pudding all this way.’

  ‘I didn’t pack any tins,’ says Azzi.

  Fortunately it is darkish in the tent as I serve dessert and it is eaten by all with great gusto (which is how we eat everything).

  ‘Hoyle,’ says Bage, ‘you are a magician. How did you conjure that?’

  ‘Recipe, please,’ says Azzi.

  ‘Chef’s secret.’

  ‘No secrets on this camp!’ replies Bage.

  ‘Alright,’ I say. ‘My plum pudding recipe. Grate three sledging biscuits with a hacksaw. Then, by hand, extract pieces of fat out of pemmican ration. Mix together. Throw in glaxo, sugar, raisins and one fistful of snow, and just three or four drops of methylated spirits. Then boil for five minutes in a sock. Presto!’

  ‘Whose sock?’ says Azzi.

  ‘One of mine, of course—it needed changing anyway,’ I reply.

  There is an uncomfortable silence at this explanation, and conviviality is temporarily lost. I save the situation by serving up our Christmas wine, which I insist be downed with a suitable toast. Bob obliges with a toast to the King, and there is much coughing and spluttering. I had made the wine by stewing raisins in pure alcohol from the primus cooker. No more toasts are proposed as we gradually get our voices back. The atmosphere improves after I reveal that I had actually used a spare food bag to boil the pudding.

  Unfortunately, Bob has endured a stressful few days. He had removed his goggles in the search for Lucky Depot. He is in considerable discomfort with his eyes that evening of our belated Christmas feast.

  I too have a restless sleep that night at Lucky Camp. I dream I am with my younger brother Eddie and we are being chased by the engineer of a steam locomotive that has pulled up to avoid hitting me as I stood taking an action shot in the middle of the tracks. Eddie is carrying my tripod and camera and laughing like crazy but he’s going to be caught and I’m calling out, ‘Run, Eddie, run,’ but he doesn’t hear me.

  The next day we leave Lucky Camp in good weather with a following breeze and a firm surface for sledging. By our 5 p.m. lunch stop we have covered twelve miles, and by 11.30 p.m. we have covered twenty-two.

  Bob, no doubt worried about rations, summonses Azzi and me as we start to unpack. ‘Lads, these conditions are still good. If you are up to it, why don’t we go for a sledging record? We could have some dinner but then keep going.’

  Refuelled by a steaming-hot hoosh, we push on. The sun is sitting on the horizon, providing no heat and only gloomy light. The temperature drops and drops, making any interruptions to sledging unpleasantly cold. Maintaining steady exertion is the only way to generate warmth. I am leading and setting the pace, and soon am in my own world, unconscious of the others, unable to see or hear them. I drift into a trance-like state, my mind flitting from changes in the ice ahead to the Doctor and the other sledging parties. They should all be back at winter quarters by now, waiting for us. I think of my ma—she alone might be anxious as to my return—and my father; he would be proud and amused to see I was on the cusp of becoming an experienced polar explorer.

  At 5 a.m. we stop, somehow put up the tent, and collapse for a mere two hours before setting off again. At
11.30 a.m. we finally stop and camp. I am utterly exhausted, but none of us has frostbite. I stay in my sleeping bag for seventeen hours, waking intermittently with the cold and painful leg cramps as I roll over, trying to get warm.

  We rise at 7 a.m. the next day, our bodies stiff and aching, and on checking our location find that we have achieved forty-one miles between camps. We manage twelve miles that day, feeling quite sore, and each of us with bad blisters from our record-breaking effort.

  The following day is New Year’s Eve 1913, and in the morning I lie in my bag waiting for the others to move. It seems extraordinary that I am really here in a tent with two first-rate scientists on our way back from the South Magnetic Pole. If my body wasn’t so numb I would have pinched myself. The painful spasms in my legs are real enough though and the patch of ice on the finnesko where I exhale. I feel quietly confident that in a week and a half we will be back at the hut with Mawson, Mertz, Ninnis and the others. We’ll barely have time to pack before returning with Captain Davis to Australia. I will have to do most of the developing on board Aurora. Many of my best glass plates—especially the wildlife photographs from Macquarie Island—should already be safely back in Hobart. Mawson has talked about producing a book and giving illustrated lecture tours using my photographs, which would gain wide circulation. The grind of running a postcard business seems a lifetime ago. Before the year is out, I could be famous.

  Two more days of hard marching and we reach the hundred-and-nine-mile mound. It is only a little over forty miles now to our supplies at Southern Cross Depot. Once there we will have fresh supplies to sustain us for the final sixty-seven miles to our winter quarters. We badly need to reach the hut at Commonwealth Bay to attend to our frozen feet. For most of the day our feet are numb and each evening in the tent we check each other for frostbite. Our faces also are frozen all day, but at night in the tent they burn as they thaw out. My nose and cheeks are scarred with frostbite and rough to the touch. The satisfaction of the hot hoosh is tempered by the stinging of my lips, which are cracked and split with no chance of healing while we sledge each day.