There can be no question as to the value of dogs as a means of traction in the Polar regions, except when travelling continuously over very rugged country, over heavily crevassed areas, or during unusually bad weather. It is in such special circumstances that the superiority of man-hauling has been proved. Further, in an enterprise where human life is always at stake, it is only fair to put forward the consideration that the dogs represent a reserve of food in case of extreme emergency.
Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard
12 November 1912 and three days thereafter, 11 miles south of One Ton Depot, with the Scott search party
In the bleak, flat, white landscape that lies before them, a sudden bump is always noticeable, and this is just such a case. As the search party sent to look for Captain Scott treks across the seemingly endless white terrain, Silas Wright suddenly notices that, a half mile out to the west, an odd-looking large white mound is throwing a small shadow on the whiteness all around.
In fact, so odd is it that while Wright tells the men on his mule train to keep going, he heads over to investigate, and the nearer he gets to it, the more he is stupefied.
Could it be?
Yes … yes … indeed, it probably is. For, poking about six inches or so out of the snow in front of the mound, he can see the tips of what appear to be two crossed skis. Suddenly feeling that he is in a sacred place, Wright furiously starts to signal for the others to come hither. He does not wish to shout out to them to come quickly, as it would be ‘a sort of sacrilege to make a noise. I felt as if I were in a cathedral and found myself with my hat on.’1
Eventually, the whole party, including their leader, Atch Atkinson, cautiously approach where Wright is standing. There is no danger, per se, but they are fearful of what they are about to find. Absurdly, at this point, despite the passage of a year without contact from Scott or his people, they are still clinging to the hope of finding some signs of life in the wilderness.
Finally, they stand before the large lump.
And yes, this looks like … Silas scratches back the snow covering, revealing light, unbleached drill canvas … a tent.
There is a collective intake of breath at the discovery. Slowly now, as the rest of the party watch, mesmerised, Silas gently, cautiously, and illogically hopefully, pulls the flap of the tent aside as they all peer inside. And there they are, perfectly preserved, just as if they closed their eyes for the last time only a minute earlier. Bill Wilson and Birdie Bowers are in their separate sleeping bags, their faces upturned. Their skin is yellow and glassy from the cold, with many blotches of frostbite.
It is obvious by the way that Wilson’s and Bowers’s bodies are wrapped up that they died first and that Scott carefully and even lovingly laid them out. Uncle Bill, at least, looks peaceful enough, with his hands crossed on his chest, though he is in a half-sitting position, the prayer book his wife gave him before departure lying open by his side. (Ten months earlier, Scott told Oates of his decision not to put One Ton further south that, ‘Regret it or not, I have taken my decision as a Christian gentleman.’ Clearly, now, they have all died as Christian gentlemen.)
Oddly, Bill has an expression on his face that almost seems the faint smile of one who knows that he is about to meet his maker and looks forward to it.
As Tryggve Gran later describes it:
I had often seen the same look on his face in the morning as he awakened, as he was of the most cheerful disposition. The look struck us to the heart, and we all stood silent in the presence of this death.2
Birdie is much the same, resting in peace, though his arms are not crossed and he is lying on his side as if asleep.
The truly shocking vision, though, is that of Robert Falcon Scott, their leader, who is also half-sitting, with his back to the tent pole, one arm stretched out towards Wilson, and, ‘between his head and the pole … his diary, apparently in order that its broader surface might provide an easier support than the pole’.3
One of the party, Petty Officer Thomas Williamson, would never forget the vision: ‘His face was very pinched and his hands, I should say, had been terribly frostbitten … Never again in my life do I want to behold the sight we have just seen.’4
Nor did Tryggve Gran: ‘It was a horrid sight … It was clear he had had a very hard last minutes. His skin was yellow, frostbite all over.’5 When the others go inside, Gran stays very firmly outside, never feeling more Norwegian than now. It was simply not his place to be inside that sepulchre of British mourning.
And yet, though the men have all too obviously been dead for many months, there is a protocol that must be observed, and as both doctor and leader of the party, Atkinson asks the others to withdraw so he can make a medical examination of each man, as well as perform the last rites, and this is done.
That completed, carefully, in the manner of a man moving around a tomb, for that is exactly what he is doing, Atkinson now gathers the diaries, documents and journals the men carried with them, together with the letters they wrote in their final days. Ever afterwards, Gran would remember hearing what sounds like a pistol shot ring out but is in fact the sound of Scott’s frozen, withered arm breaking, as Atkinson lifts it to retrieve his diary.
On the first page of diary number three, Scott has written, ‘Send this diary to my wife,’ but then has crossed out the last word and replaced it with ‘widow’.6
Among the other diaries, documents and letters is, of course, the note and the letter that Amundsen has penned, asking Scott to pass them on to the Norwegian King, the first confirmation that the rest of the Scott party have of the Norwegians’ success.
Upon Atkinson telling the others of this, Crean, in tears, strides across to Tryggve Gran and offers his hand in personal congratulations that his country has been the first to the Pole.
‘Sir,’ he says, ‘permit me to congratulate you. Dr Atkinson has just found Scott’s diary, where it is written that our people found the Norwegian flag when they came to the South Pole.’7
Gran, also in tears, grasps the Irishman’s hand and thanks him.
Gran is so moved by the manner of the Englishmen’s death that, ‘I just felt that I envied them. They died having done something great. How hard death must be for those who meet it having done nothing.’8
Outside, Atkinson continues to carefully go through Scott’s diary and the letter to the public, so they can all know just what happened to the party.
The diaries of the other men, however, which contain letters they have written to their own loved ones, remain unopened under the protocol that their families have a right to read them before anyone else.
The news of the manner of Oates’s death, when Atkinson tells them, makes a deep impression on them all. As Wright records in his diary that night, ‘knowing that he had no hope and realizing he was a drag on the Party, he walked out into a blizzard about 19 m south of here. A damn fine finish.’9
What now, though? Well, they died here together, and here together they would remain. This will be their tomb, and in place of an epitaph on a tombstone Atkinson writes some words on a piece of paper and places it in an envelope beside Captain Scott. It reads:
Captain R. F. Scott, C.V.O. R.N.
Dr E. A. Wilson, and
Lieutenant H. R. Bowers, R.I.M.
As a slight token to perpetuate their gallant and successful attempt to reach the goal. This they did on 17 January 1912, after the Norwegians had already done so on 14 December 1911.
Also to commemorate their two gallant comrades:
Captain L. E. G. Oates, of the Iniskilling Dragoons, who walked to his death in a blizzard willingly about 20 miles10 south of this place to try and save his comrades beset by hardship;
Also of Petty Officer Evans, who died at the foot of Beardmore Glacier.
The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.11
And now, carefully, just as if the men inside were sleeping and were not to be woken, the living men remove the poles supporting the tent so that the canvas collapses down upon the bodies. They then spend the rest of this day and some of the next heaping snow upon it, turning the burial site into a large mound, in a rough polar equivalent of committing the bodies to the depths. Upon the mound, they place a pair of skis, bound together to form a Christian cross.
At this point, as the wind whistles around, and the nearly midnight sun dips low above the Pole, reflecting from the iridescent clouds an ethereal light over the whole scene, the service proper gets under way. To begin, Atkinson reads out Scott’s ‘Message to the Public’, which includes an account of the noble death of Oates. So moving are the words, so emotional the occasion, so haunting it is to make the words of the dead man lying before them live again, Atch must pause every now and then to gather himself but then finishes with the strong words that are effectively the epitaph on the snowy tomb before them:
The causes of the disaster are not due to faulty organisation but to misfortune in all risks which had to be undertaken … The loss of the pony transport … The weather … The soft snow in lower reaches of glacier. Every detail of our food supplies, clothing and depots … worked out to perfection … I do not think human beings ever came through such a month as we have come through … We should have got through … but for the sickening of … Captain Oates, and a shortage of fuel in our depots for which I cannot account.
We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last … Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.12
As the graveyard group around the mound press together tightly, Atkinson again composes himself to read the Christian Burial Service, together with a chapter from Corinthians, and then, all together, they sing Scott’s favourite hymn, ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, particularly appropriate for the occasion. No matter that the sung words are instantly whipped away by the wind, they sing it with gusto to, if not wake the dead, at least stir them a little:
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!
As they finish, there is a full ten seconds of complete silence, bar the wailing wind, and then, more or less together, they snap to. It is time to get on with it, come what may. In Antarctica, it is always time to get on with it, for to falter is to freeze, to dally is to die.
The most urgent task now is to find the noble Oates to give him, too, the Christian burial he deserves. An emotional Atkinson is particularly insistent on this, as Oates was his closest friend on the expedition. Carefully, scanning the landscape as they proceed slowly south, they look for him, but wherever his body lies he is clearly completely covered by snow and ice. The only sign of the Soldier that they can find is his sleeping bag, located 15 miles to the south of Scott’s final camp. Inside the bag is the discarded theodolite, his finneskos and socks. One of the finneskos is slit down the front, evidently to get his gangrenous foot into it.
Despite their failure to locate Oates’s body in the early morning of this 15th day of November, they erect a cross, on the base of which they write the inscription:
Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman,
Captain L. E. G. Oates of the Iniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard to try to save his comrades, beset by hardship.
And then they head back to Cape Evans, with Atkinson keenly aware that some months hence he will have to break to the waiting world the terrible news of Scott’s tragedy.
15 November 1912, Queen’s Hall, London, Amundsen is not cheered by three cheers
Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen …
Dignitaries and notables, members of the Royal Geographical Society and their friends have turned out to the Queen’s Hall in a fair number to hear the Norwegian chap, Amundsen, deliver his paper giving details of his Antarctic venture. (True, when Peary had been similarly received two years earlier by the Royal Geographical Society to talk of his North Pole conquest, they had to book the much bigger Royal Albert Hall, but Peary had not been competing with an Englishman. This tidy little Queen’s Hall will just have to do for the Norwegian.)
Introducing the guest speaker, the president of the society, Lord Curzon, declares:
In the field of exploration we know no jealousy. Even while we are honouring Capt. Amundsen, I am sure his thoughts no less than ours are turned to our brave countryman, Capt. Scott, who is still shrouded in the glimmering half light of the Antarctic and whose footsteps reached the same pole doubtless only a few weeks after Amundsen. The names of these two men will perpetually be linked, along with Shackleton’s, in the history of Antarctic exploration.13
Hear, hear. Hear, hear. A rough rumble of approval rolls through the room, amid the thick pall of British protocol. Not joining in any such positive rumble in the presence of that man is Kathleen Scott, who has knocked back a front-row seat at the top table in preference to sitting relatively anonymously in the top gallery.
Similarly, while Amundsen’s own speech, in which he details what they did and how they did it, seems to be reasonably well received, in Kathleen’s view, as she would describe it to her husband in her diary later that night, it was ‘plucky, but dull and of a dullness!’.14
And then it is none other than Sir Ernest Shackleton (whose brother Frank just happens to be currently under arrest for an alleged part in the theft of the Irish Crown jewels) who proposes a generous vote of thanks to the Norwegian.
Hear, hear. Hear, hear.
And then it happens …
At the end of the actual speech of thanks for Amundsen’s address, Lord Curzon – the Norwegian explorer would ever after maintain – makes a remark that wounds Amundsen to his core. After noting the manner in which Amundsen and his men have managed to be the first to get to the Pole, Lord Curzon turns to Amundsen and says, ‘I therefore propose three cheers for the dogs.’15
Three cheers for the dogs … three cheers for the dogs … three cheers for the dogs …
Amundsen, at least the way he recounted it ever afterwards (though there would be bitter dispute as to whether Lord Curzon ever did say those five words16), could barely think straight for the sting of the insult he had just suffered.
17 November to 1 December 1912, 63 miles to the east of Cape Denison, Mawson, Ninnis ’n’ Mertz experience pride before several falls
A week into their trek, Mawson is well satisfied, even proud, with the progress they are making and the work being done. With regular stops so he can set up his theodolite to chart the landscape they are covering – while Mertz boils the hypsometer to measure altitude and, between them all, several times a day, they record magnetic variation and meteorological conditions – they continue to push east over sometimes difficult but never impassable terrain. As they trek, Mawson is getting to know his two companions a lot better. While it is one thing to have been merely around them along with dozens of other men on a ship or with 18 of them in the hut, it is quite another to be with them day after day, every day, in extreme conditions, facing obstacle after obstacle, all of them putting their lives in each other’s hands.
Mawson is extremely impressed with both of them. On the odd occasion that Belgrave Ninnis is not known as one half of Ninnis ’n’ Mertz, he has been nicknamed ‘Cherub’ by the others, due to his rather beatific baby face and the fact that he has a complexion as pink and white as that of any girl. However, he is strong, generous in spirit and resilient.
Though both Mawson and Mertz already have a lot of experience in covering severe frozen terrain like this, now Ninnis, too, becomes expert in such things as being able to spot the telltale wavy lines on the surface that can indicate the presence of the edge of a crevasse, where extreme care must be taken. He learns how it is best to cross such snow bridges square on, to get across them as quickly as possible, and becomes ever more proficient at running his dogs so they exert maximum pulling power, which is no small art.
As to Mertz, notwithstanding that it seems he has a predisposition to suffering snow-blindness, Mawson is more confident than ever that he has made the right choice in picking him. With that curious combination of toughness and cheeriness, ‘X’, as they sometimes refer to him, is close to the ideal sledging companion.
Together, the men push on, taking their bearings principally from ‘shooting the sun’ and examining the distance travelled on their sledge-meters.
In the bigger picture, highly prized for all of them in this unending white terrain is when they spy new landmarks. Such a thrill occurs at 5 pm on this afternoon of 17 November when they crest a ridge at an altitude of 2600 feet to see before them the splendid vision of ‘a fine panorama of coastal scenery’.17 On the far-eastern horizon, they spy the very glacier tongue projecting into the Southern Ocean that Aurora first followed to make her way into Commonwealth Bay and delight to see, as Mawson puts it, ‘its long wall touched in luminous bands by the south-western sun’.18 Directly in front of them, they see a wide valley, and beyond that again there is a deep indentation in the coastline, which means they will have to soon steer a more southerly course to be able to get around it.
They make camp that evening at 7.30 pm, well advanced into the wide valley. With the next day dawning bright and beautiful, they make good progress before that evening something even more exciting appears on the distant horizon to their south-east, so exciting that they alter course to get a better look.
To their amazement, bit by bit, a rather imposing mountain starts to rise from the ice before them … and by the following evening again they are close enough to be standing at the lip of a large glacial valley, where they can see the glacier they must cross sweeping by the eastern side of this 1750-foot-high mountain.
Of the many pleasures of travelling where no man has gone before, the privilege of marking fresh geographical features in one’s journal and naming them is one of the foremost. And so, just as Mawson named the feature discovered the previous day Madigan Nunatak, in honour of his valued expedition member Cecil Madigan, on this occasion Mawson decides to call the completely snow-clad mountain ahead of them Aurora Peak, in honour of the worthy ship that has not only brought them to these parts but in six weeks’ time will, hopefully, be taking them away again.
The next day, a long journey crossing that glacier commences, with the icy slopes of the other side so far away they can only just discern them. Though the dogs perform well, the day after that there is something more than a mere hiccup with their finest hauler, Ginger. This particular ‘hiccup’, from her nether regions, on this day produces no fewer than 14 puppies, which is some explanation for why she uncharacteristically cut loose after lunch the day before. Of course, there is no question of the puppies being nurtured, and there is really only one choice, which is carried out. They have no sooner come into the world than they are killed and given to the other dogs to feed on.
It is yet another example of where, as was elucidated by Captain Cook 140 years earlier, things that would have revolted a civilised spirit while in Europe simply have to be accepted in this part of the world.
In this glorious new world, every day seems to bring a fresh vision, previously unseen by the eyes of man – though sometimes the fresh vision also indicates problems to come.
On 21 November, after a difficult morning’s sledging through a strong wind and heavy drift, things calm and visibility improves enough that they can see what they must face: ‘a glittering line of broken ice, stretching at right angles to our path’.19
A more immediate problem is that they now find themselves in a part of the glacier filled with crevasses, through which the dogs are regularly falling before being hauled back.
The party stop for lunch in a place surrounded by many such terrifying abysses, and while Mertz prepares a meal – on today’s menu is, let’s see, hoosh – Ninnis and Mawson go to take a photo of a nearby open crevasse. Returning, they pass on either side of the tent, and the next thing Mawson knows he hears a strange sound and rushes around to find Ninnis rather as he found Edgeworth David four years earlier, hanging onto the lip of the crevasse for his very life as his legs dangle over a gaping maw of nothingness. Mawson soon drags him to safety, and, lying on their bellies looking down into the black depths, they both realise with a shudder just how close Ninnis has come to disappearing forever.20
Pushing on, by the afternoon of 24 November they have risen to the far side of the glacial valley enough to see the glacier they have just crossed in all its magnificence, ‘extending out to sea as a floating tongue beyond the horizon. Inland, some 20 miles to the south, it mounted up in seamed and riven “cataracts” to a smooth, broad and shallow groove which wound into the ice-cap.’21
They continue to use Aurora Peak to get their bearings and are sad to see it finally sink back into the whiteness as they continue to the east, where the western wall of a second major glacier is now becoming apparent, lying around 145 miles east of their Winter Quarters. Mawson has been expecting to see this glacier, as it is clearly noted on the map left by Charles Wilkes some 70 years earlier, of which he has a copy now.
Crossing this glacier, beginning on 27 November, proves problematic, as the steep slope to get down it is covered with sastrugi and continues for 1000 feet. The only way to get through this is to let most of the dogs loose – in the confidence that they will return to the only source of food, which is what they have for them on the sledges – and let gravity plus two dogs a sledge do the work. Even then, it is chaotic, as the sledges prove uncontrollable and turn over many times before the bottom is reached.
Once the dogs come back to them and are put back in harness, one bitch, Betli, is missing and is never to be seen again, presumably fallen into a crevasse. She joins the roll call of the dog-dead. (Jappy and Fusilier have previously been shot for, literally, not pulling their weight.) The next day, the bitch Blizzard is also shot for her trouble, as with all the work she has weakened so much she is more valuable as a food source to the other dogs than as a puller. Still, even without her the conditions have improved so much that they make 16 miles on the day.
Over the next couple of days, the three men continue crossing the glacier – only narrowly escaping on one occasion losing an entire sledge and dog team down a crevasse – until, at last, on the evening of 30 November, with the 12 dogs remaining, they are able to get to the higher reaches of the eastern side of this second major glacier, where they camp.
The following morning, as they move a little further, get a smidgen higher and can get their bearings, Mawson suffers a keen disappointment. Based on the Wilkes map, he was expecting to now come over this lip of the glacier’s edges and see a vista of land before them to the north-east. But there is nothing but … sea!
‘It is obvious we have been deluded by Wilkes’s reports,’ he writes in his diary, ‘for it appears that no land exists in that [north-east] direction, and if Wilkes saw anything it can hardly have been more than a barrier edge.’22
After carefully checking angles and calculating approximate distances with his trusty theodolite, Mawson carefully redraws the map to reflect the now proven reality. He then changes their course so as to move further inland and hopefully traverse less crevassed terrain than that typically found where the glaciers begin to enter the sea. As they proceed, the only notable complication is that the weather has acknowledged the first official day of summer by warming up to the point where it makes the snow sticky and difficult to move across, meaning Mawson again must adapt their plan. To try to minimise this problem, he changes their schedule so that they travel at night, when it is colder and the snow firmer.
9 December 1912 and four days thereafter, 287 miles east of Winter Quarters, Mawson’s Far-Eastern Party meet a ‘wasp’s nest’
How very, very odd. On this day, from out of nowhere, and even though they are well inland, suddenly a snow petrel appears and briefly circles over Ninnis’s sledge before quickly disappearing. Where has it come from? Where has it gone to?
They press on.
While it has been initially exciting to be in a place where one’s every step is where no man has trodden before, by this time, well by this time … plod … plod … plod … most of that thrill is gone.
Five weeks and 287 miles into their icy odyssey away from the hut, all three of the party are looking forward to soon putting their feet exactly where they have trodden before – to getting to the point where they can turn back and head for the safety of Winter Quarters. Hopefully, of course, they will arrive before Aurora, which should be chugging back towards Antarctica within a fortnight to take them back to Hobart. (Oh, Hobart! From their current position in the wilds of Antarctica, that tiny Tasmanian town seems like London or Paris, the height of civilisation.)
The going has not been easy, and the distance they have traversed is a lot less than Mawson hoped for. In an effort to increase the number of miles they can cover before turning back, on 12 December he comes up with a new plan.
They will abandon the recently damaged sledge of Ninnis at this campsite and very carefully redistribute the load from the discarded sledge across the remaining two.
For Mawson has thought it through. He reasons that if one of the sledges is to tumble into a crevasse atop a crumbling snow bridge, it will most likely be the first sledge – so it will be the wisest thing to have the most important supplies on the second sledge, pulled by the best dogs. And though that second sledge is admittedly 50 pounds heavier than the first sledge, that weight will rapidly diminish in coming days as they and the dogs eat their way through much of the supplies it bears.
Mawson also decides that in a couple of days’ time, they will establish another depot where they can leave most of their gear and make a quick dash as far east as they could safely get, before returning to the depot, collecting their supplies and beginning the long haul back to Winter Quarters.
All happy, all good, all …?
No, Ninnis is not happy. It has nothing to do with Mawson’s announced plans and everything to do with the whitlow – a very painful and pus-filled infection – atop one of his fingers. It has been troubling him for a week, to the point where he has lost sleep over it. After a terrible and nearly sleepless night, on the morning of 13 December, before setting off, he asks Mawson to lance it, which the expedition leader does, the pus suddenly bursting forth. While Ninnis recovers, Mawson and Mertz get on with re-arranging the sleds, and they are soon under way.
At 4 pm, they encounter what Mertz describes as ‘a wasp’s nest’ of crevasses.23 However, they negotiate a course circumventing the crevasses with ‘pretty well clear luck’ and, having reached safer ground, camp after an eight-and-a-quarter-mile day.
14 December 1912 and the day thereafter, 311 miles east of Winter Quarters, Mawson has to say farewell
And some days are just like this. After all the blizzards, all the problems, all the falls down crevasses and the terribly hard yards gained, suddenly it all comes together and they are able to positively zoom along. Mertz is in his customary position, in front on skis, loudly singing his Swiss student songs. Mawson is 30 yards behind on the lightly packed first sledge, pulled by the weakest six dogs. And the cheerful Ninnis – who, since his finger was lanced, has slept well for the first time in a week – brings up the rear, another 40 yards back again, with the heavily packed sledge pulled by the strongest dogs.
All is right with the world, everything is as good as it could possibly be, they are not far from the point where they will turn around to be homeward bound and …
And suddenly, Mawson looks up to see that Mertz has lifted a ski pole of warning, of something unusual up ahead. It is not cause for huge alarm, for Mertz has done this many times in his role as the veritable scout of their expedition – it just means be careful.
After Mawson reaches the point where Mertz has given the warning, he stops his sledge to look around for what might have warranted it, but, seeing no immediate indication of anything untoward, he hops aboard the sledge to set about calculating the latitudinal observations they have taken at noon. But wait …
Briefly casting his eyes to the ground, he now does see, after all, the signs of a snow bridge: the small depression in the terrain where the overlying snow takes on a slightly different appearance, and the tiny telltale wavy line that marks the edges of a crevasse. Danger.
Quickly turning behind him, Mawson shouts a warning to Ninnis, who is now walking by the side of his own sledge. At Mawson’s call, the young Englishman immediately swings the leading dogs around to cross any hidden crevasse front on – to minimise his time on the dangerous part – rather than cross it as Mawson has done, diagonally. Satisfied that Ninnis is safe, Mawson returns to his calculations and continues forward.
The near silence of that beautifully benign day, peppered only by the panting of his dogs and the creak of the runners, is suddenly if lightly broken by a weak and plaintive whine from one of Ninnis’s dogs. Assuming it is because the dog has just had a touch from the Englishman’s whip on its lazy behind, Mawson playfully says to young George, the laziest dog of his own team, ‘You will be getting a little of that, too, George, if you are not careful.’24
But there is no time to continue even this imaginary conversation. For now, Mawson becomes aware that Mertz has stopped and is looking back, open-mouthed, to a point behind him. Mawson turns around to see what is up with Ninnis and …
…
And Ninnis is not there.
Mawson continues to stare for a few moments, willing Ninnis to suddenly reappear, nearly sure that the head of the young army officer will bob up in a second as he comes up over a dip in the terrain. But Mawson cannot remember any such dip in the last 30 seconds, and Ninnis does not suddenly emerge. There is just Mawson himself, Mertz, the panting dogs, the sorrowful, whistling wind and nothing else … until they both suddenly hear it.
Again, it is the whimper of a dog coming from the direction where Ninnis was last seen. Mawson begins to run back, still hoping that he will suddenly see Ninnis at the bottom of a dip, or at the very least his sledge, with the rope trailing downwards to the suspended Englishman.
But upon this vast vista of whiteness, there is nothing, stone-cold motherless nothing, until he comes upon a crevasse that has broken in, ‘a gaping hole in the surface about 11 ft wide’.25 Leading up to the far side of it, he can see the ski tracks of Mertz and the sledge tracks of himself and Ninnis. But coming from the hole there are only the tracks of himself and Mertz.
Mawson looks over the edge, not knowing what he will see, but fearing it greatly. It is worse, much worse than he can have possibly imagined.
He gasps. There is seemingly no bottom to this crevasse. Just as he said ‘let the winds of hell do their worst’ before they all departed, this is surely the place where those winds have come from. All he can see is a dark abyss, going down, down, down, with just one ledge visible about 150 feet below, on which he can see only a food bag and a moaning, writhing dog, whose back appears to be broken as only its front paws are moving. Beside it is a dead dog and what looks to be the tent and a crucial bag of food supplies.
Appalled and shocked by the horror of it all, Mawson calls down into the depths for ‘Ninnis …! Ninnis …! NINNISSSSS …!’ But wherever he is, he is so far down that there is not even an echo … and certainly no reply from him.
And now, Mertz, equally stunned, has arrived, and he too is calling for his best friend, in his thickly accented English –
‘Ninnähs! Nin-näähs!’ – but there is no response. Both men are in shock, not believing that this terrible thing has really happened and yet being confronted with the evidence before them.
For the next three hours, they continue to call forlornly, all while the dog with the broken back dies before their eyes. In response to the call, there is only the silence of the tomb. But still they cannot bring themselves to stop calling. That would be giving up. That would be accepting that Ninnis is dead and that the vast majority of their food supplies is gone – two things that neither of them is prepared to acknowledge.
In pauses between their shouting, however, they discuss how it is that they got across the snow bridge while Ninnis didn’t. Whereas Mertz was on skis and Mawson was sitting on his sledge, Ninnis was walking beside the more heavily laden sledge. Was all the sledge weight together with his own weight – coming directly down through his feet – enough extra pressure per square-inch to punch a hole in the snow and take the rest of it with him? Had their own weight so weakened the snow bridge that it had become nothing more than a lethal trapdoor, waiting for him?
They look for options, for something constructive they can do. What about climbing down into the crevasse to look for him? No. By putting all their alpine ropes together, they still can’t even reach the supplies on the ledge below, let alone go any deeper than that to look for Ninnis. Besides, the crevasse is far too wide to lay the remaining sledge across as a support.
Bit by bit, the enormity of what has happened really does hit them.
‘We could do nothing, really nothing,’ writes Mertz. ‘We were standing, helplessly, next to a friend’s grave, my best friend of the entire expedition.’26 Not only is their dear friend Ninnis dead, but they have also lost their best six dogs, all of their dog food, four-fifths of their own food supplies, their tent and one sledge, together with such crucial things as their spade and ice-axe, and, not least, Mertz’s windproof Burberry trousers, which Ninnis was carrying with him on this surprisingly warm day. All at a point when they are 311 miles east of the nearest succour, on the wrong side of some of the most treacherous and unforgiving country on the planet. For a short time, they both feel completely lost and helpless, until their survival instinct kicks in and they are moved to action.
The most urgent thing, of course, is to get out of this field, which may well be strewn with lethal crevasses all over. To get their bearings, both men leave the remaining sledge and carefully, oh so carefully, trek a further five miles in a south-easterly direction to reach a vantage point so they can look down upon the terrain they must cross.
There is no question they must turn back – immediately! Without adequate food, clothing and camping equipment, they will be lucky to survive the march home. Having encountered such dangerous crevasse-filled country towards the coast, they have long planned to return to Cape Denison via an inland route. This means they have laid no depots to resupply from, as they would have done had they intended to get home along a retraced route.
As the two men stand there, gazing to the north, suddenly, from out of nowhere, a snow petrel appears, which flits about for a short time before flying away.27 It looks like the petrel that appeared above Ninnis, from out of nowhere, just a few days earlier. Strange.
It is time to get to grips with trying, however vainly, to close the gap between them and safety. Carefully, they negotiate their way back to the remaining sledge and get themselves organised. It is time to discard whatever is not absolutely necessary to their survival, bar the records they have taken, as it is unthinkable to discard their whole raison d’être for this journey.
As to food, there is just enough on this surviving sledge to keep them alive for maybe 11 or 12 days, and judging from the duration of the journey to this point it will take at least 35 days to get back to Winter Quarters.
Right now, so conscious are they of the grimness of their food situation that they decide the only meal they can allow themselves is to boil up some old and empty food-bags they are about to discard in order to make some exceedingly thin soup.
For food for the dogs, they have next to nothing … other than the dogs themselves. Clearly, as those dogs weaken, they will have to be shot and fed to the other dogs … and themselves, to help make up the rations they are missing. (Somewhere, the spirit of Captain Cook, if not Mr Forster’s dog, stirs.) In the meantime, the dogs will have to make do with whatever can be found for them. Mawson throws them some mitts and rawhide straps that are no longer needed, and the dogs begin fighting for the few precious morsels.
Watching the dogs snapping and snarling at each other, right beside the crevasse where Ninnis has died, both men feel as miserable and as vulnerable as kittens caught in a terrible snowstorm. They will fight to survive, but they are up against forces so much more powerful than themselves that the odds against their coming out of this alive are overwhelming. But – and this is no small thing – at least they have each other, and that really is something to cling on to.
As Mawson later reflects upon it:
When comrades tramp the road to anywhere through a lonely blizzard-ridden land in hunger, want and weariness the interests, ties and fates of each are interwoven in a fabric of friendship and affection. The shock of Ninnis’s death struck home and deeply stirred us.28
By 9 pm, they are finally ready to go, bar one thing. They need to formally acknowledge that Ninnis is dead. They have been putting off doing any kind of a service for him to this point, because any such service was a denial of even the slimmest of hopes. But now it is time. The Australian and Swiss stand by the edge of the crevasse, their uncovered heads bowed, as Mawson slowly and solemnly intones the burial service, his words carried away on the growling wind: ‘We therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth …’
At its conclusion, there is a brief silence, leavened only by the wind whipping across the maw of Ninnis’s open grave, until Mertz, still deeply shaken by what has occurred, shakes Mawson by the hand and offers a sincere, broken, ‘Thank you.’29
All Mawson can say is, ‘May God help us.’30
In the wake of the unspeakable tragedy, Mawson and Mertz, two tiny dwarves on a vista of snow-white nothingness, take stock.
What they are left with are six dogs, barely one and a half weeks’ supplies for what at best will be a four-week journey, two sleds and … very little hope. The only saving grace is they still have some kerosene, a Primus cooker and a spare tent cover.
The men’s thoughts now turn to the importance of immediately retracing their steps to the 12 December campsite of two days before, where they know they can salvage some abandoned gear from the damaged sledge, including a broken shovel, which may now prove invaluable.
The question is, will they be able to get to it before dropping from exhaustion, for resting without a tent for protection is out of the question.
The spot where Ninnis disappeared is a terrain of low hills, and they now return through it, with Mertz again going ahead on skis, while the dogs slowly and painfully pull the sledge up the slopes, as Mawson walks beside. At the peak of each hill, Mawson climbs on board, and all together they charge like mad things down the other side, the dogs hot on the heels of the seemingly crazed Mertz.
Yes, there is the constant danger of falling into another crevasse, but such is the extremity of their situation now that dying from falling into a crevasse is only a possibility, whereas not getting back to the abandoned sledge and its tent in time would make death a certainty. They have to race, and race they do, with their sledge lurching fearfully from side to side as, in Mawson’s mind, ‘Death and the great Providence’ fight a bitter duel to decide their fate. In such a race, knowing that speed is of the essence for Providence to have a chance of winning the duel, there is little time to grieve for the dear, departed Ninnis.
‘We strove to forget it in the necessity of work, but we knew that the truth would assuredly enter our souls in the lonely days to come.’31
Not only is there little grief, there is also not much fear. Mawson’s mood is one of almost numb resignation. If Death wins in this fight against Providence, then so be it. And yet, for the moment, Providence holds her own and they pass over far more dangerous-looking crevasses than the one that has claimed Ninnis, without any damage whatsoever.
Finally, after only five and a half hours of this downhill madness, following their outward tracks, they have covered the entire 24 miles, and at 2.30 am on 15 December they spy their discarded sledge up ahead.32
It is a valuable resource, and no sooner have they arrived than Mertz is at it, taking one of the runners of the sledge and breaking it in two. In conjunction with his skis, this will give them the four stanchions they need, lashed tightly at the top in the manner of an Indian tepee, four feet above, around which they can put the spare tent cover that has mercifully survived on Mawson’s sledge. By piling plenty of snow-blocks around its base, they prove to have a serviceable shelter, even if there is absolutely no room inside for one of them to change even his mind.
As they lie there, exhausted, their dire plight hits them anew and they discuss just which direction they should head in from here.
There are two choices. One is to return as quickly as possible to the coast, which, though it is the longer route, would give them a greater chance of shooting some seals for sustenance. The other is to stay with their original plan and return inland, via the shorter route, using the ten days’ ration they have, supplemented by the meat from their six dogs.
In the end, they decide on the second option, the one with less distance and fewer crevasses. Give them anything but a route with a lot of crevasses. Beyond everything else, they must get back to the Winter Quarters at Cape Denison before Aurora would have to leave without them.
14 December 1912, Terra Nova leaves Lyttelton, New Zealand, as Aurora arrives again in Hobart
At the first glint of the Lyttelton dawn, all is shipshape and ready to go on Terra Nova. It is so early when she casts off, at 5 am, that there is only a light sprinkling of friends and spectators on the wharf to farewell them. Commander Teddy Evans is eager to get under way and leave New Zealand so they can ‘sail south to lift the veil’, as one Antipodean paper expresses it.33
Yes, it was a bitter blow to him to have been turned back from the assault on the Pole by Scott, not to mention having nearly died shortly thereafter, but after returning to England to rest and recuperate he has now recovered both his health and his good humour and is keen to return to pick up all the expedition members, most particularly the Scott party returned from the Pole. At the request of Professor Edgeworth David, they will be taking a different route to the south this time, to take fresh soundings and do some dredging work on a previously unexplored part of the sea bed. If all goes to plan, Evans expects to get to the Antarctic edge late in the second week of January.
Just a few hours later, Aurora, under the command of Captain Davis, arrives once more in Hobart, after a long excursion of over a month taking soundings between Hobart and Macquarie Island, and Macquarie Island and Auckland Island, south of New Zealand. The most interesting thing discovered is an underwater ridge south of Tasmania and extending towards Antarctica. The top of the ridge is just 500 fathoms deep, while either side it is 2400 fathoms. The existence of this very ridge was previously posited by Professor David as the remains of a land bridge once connecting Australia to Antarctica, before the seas rose, and Davis has been extremely excited to establish its existence.
For now, Aurora must replenish her stocks and get ready to depart in just under a fortnight’s time to head back to Cape Denison to pick up Mawson’s men, as well as Wild and his men at the Western Base.
15 December to 26 December 1912, heading towards Cape Denison, Mawson and Mertz’s dogs grow nervous
Although all the dogs started out well enough, all of them bar Ginger have weakened terribly.
A single shot rings out in the polar morning, its crack rolling across the stark bleakness with nary a single obstacle to raise an echo, and the weakest of the dogs, George, is dispatched. Shortly thereafter, large pieces of George are being fed to the other dogs, while small pieces are being lightly sizzled on the lid of the aluminium cooker being held over the Primus stove, the makeshift tent filling with the sound of the hissing stove and the fragrant aroma of cooking meat.
Still some 287 miles from the hut, Mawson and Mertz sit there, gnawing on the stringy meat for their breakfast, in rough if companionable silence. Sometimes, there is really nothing you can say, is there, George? … George? For that is the way they are thinking of him, rather than as an anonymous piece of meat. And, by George, he has a strong, musty taste.
Mertz loved George with a passion, the same way that Mawson still loves Pavlova, now gnawing on George at Mawson’s feet, and for the Swiss man the meal is particularly ghastly. For Mawson, the only part of George that is remotely pleasurable to eat is his soft and mushy liver, which slips down fairly easily. On the other end of the scale are his paws, which can only be digested after being stewed for a very long time. (The recipe could well have been to put George into the water with a stone, and when the stone is soft, George will be ready to eat.)
The other dogs, however, are ravenous, and their far more powerful jaws and lower levels of sensitivity make notably short work of the rest of George, wolfing down his meat, his skin and even his fur, before crunching through his very bones. In short order, apart from the scraps of meat that Mawson and Mertz have put aside for their next meal, there is nothing of George that remains, with even his eyes, ears, genitals and anus consumed by the dogs.
Mawson suddenly realises that in the madness and misery of the loss of Ninnis, they have forgotten something important. They have overlooked raising the Union Jack at the farthest point east that they have trekked, effectively claiming this part of the planet for Australia and the British Empire.
This is soon put to rights on this early evening of 15 December 1912 as they plant the flag and formally name this newly discovered territory King George V Land, with Mawson perhaps wondering quietly at the futility of a ceremony no one is likely to ever learn of, but at least it is done.
Finally breaking camp at 6 pm, they start off strongly and in this land of the midnight sun are able to keep on walking in the low glow of the early morning hours. Not that finding the right direction is easy. It is not simply a matter of getting out their compass and following it, for, this close to the South Magnetic Pole, their compass is not too much to the north of useless. Or maybe to the south of useless … it is always very hard to say.
The only way they can now be sure they are heading in their direction of due west is by orientating their march at right angles to the sastrugi, whipped up by winds that run almost directly north–south. When freshly fallen snow covers the sastrugi, they need to halt from time to time, dig down and examine the underlying formations to ensure they are on course.
All of it is exhausting, and not just for them, as the remaining dogs, too, are suffering terribly. On the early morning of 17 December, after completing another 16 miles, Johnson – once strong enough to try to take on an elephant seal – has become too weak to carry on. Mertz has no recourse but to shoot him and cut him up.
And so it goes: night after night of sheer exhaustion, stumbling, pressing on, resting briefly, shooting a dog, eating it and moving on again, with the loss of each dog of course meaning that they must take progressively more of the weight of hauling the sledge themselves, all while their remaining dogs get increasingly exhausted and thin. On 21 December, one dog, Haldane, falls down a crevasse, and though he is saved soon afterwards drops in his tracks and also has to be shot. His carcass, like poor Johnson’s, is added to their food supplies.
Through it all, they have kept moving, and on the upside they have covered an approximate 115 miles since Ninnis’s death, meaning they are now under 200 miles from the safety of Winter Quarters.
Against that, they are rapidly deteriorating physically, as, on reduced rations and doing more work than ever, their bodies have no choice but to effectively eat themselves. First their fat, then their muscle mass reduces accordingly. Though immediately after the loss of Ninnis they have been able to travel as much as 20 miles in a day, that daily tally is now dropping in line with their strength and their number of dogs. On a bad day, it goes as low as just ten miles, and it has become progressively more difficult to erect their tent as they weaken. When the temperature drops, it is a particular problem for Mertz, as his Burberry over-trousers were lost with Ninnis’s sledge, leaving him only with his thinner Jaeger woollen under-trousers – though, oddly, he finds that when he sweats, that sweat instantly freezes into a thin crust, which gives him at least a little protection from the wind, in the same manner as an igloo.34 This is one positive thing, in a litany of woes.
It is not simply that the terrain, which is littered with a riot of high sastrugi, soft snow and crevasses, is difficult to traverse; it is that the often overcast weather and heavy drift obscures the sun, which prevents them seeing a clear way forward.
And finally, there is this. Over the last week, Mawson’s dog Pavlova has just about given up the ghost. Mawson now carries the waning, whining canine upon his sledge, prolonging, for as long as possible … the moment that has now come. Having hauled the heavy sledge uphill, Mawson acknowledges to himself that Pavlova’s final curtain has arrived.
Always conscious of lightening the load, they have recently discarded their rifle, meaning that Mawson must take to this sweet-natured animal with his knife. God help him.
A small whimper, a shattered gurgle, and soon enough it is over, as he begins to harvest Pavlova’s body for nutrition, right down to the very marrow of her bones for soup. Through it all, Mawson is able to at least gain some moral strength by repeating to himself some of his favourite lines from the stoical philosophy of Marcus Aurelius: ‘If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee but your own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out that judgement now.’35
By Christmas Eve, the two exhausted men reach the middle of the second of the glaciers that they crossed after leaving Winter Quarters, leaving them still with 160 miles to get back to safety.
On this night, Mawson’s imagination works overtime as he has a bizarre dream involving rows of giant confectioner’s cakes four feet in diameter with inbuilt fuses that, once lit, set in train a chemical process that completes their cooking.
Look at the size of them! Their colour! Their smell! The ingenious scientific way in which they could be cooked, even … well, even when in a tent in Antarctica! Albeit disappointed, he has room for but one cake; he makes his selection and hurries off to the counter to make payment. But now, when skipping off down the street, he suddenly realises he has forgotten the cake. Alas, upon returning, a closed door bears the sign ‘Early Closing’.
Early Closing … Early Closing … Early Closing …
He wakes with a start. The wind is howling.
Oh. There is no cake shop. He is in a tent in Antarctica, with Mertz, who is snoring. He is hungry. He is always hungry. He is starving. At least there will be a reasonably good meal on the morrow, even if it is less traditional Christmas fare – an altogether different kind of Pavlova. For, ever the pragmatist, Mawson soon sets about turning the remains of his favourite dog, once held in the arms of and cuddled by the greatest ballerina of her day, into a stew, all while he does his calculations.
Given they are 160 miles as the crow flies from Cape Denison, and are travelling at an average of 15 miles per day, he works out that every day they can have just six ounces of dried food, down from the original allocation of 34, augmented with around eight ounces of dog meat, which will hopefully be sufficient to survive on. It all helps distract him somewhat for a short time, but Mawson cannot help but think of Paquita on this Christmas morning, wondering precisely where she is and what she will be doing, apart from, he hopes, missing him as terribly as he misses her. No doubt, wherever she is, she will be having a real Christmas meal, with all the trimmings.
Suddenly, he remembers the two half-biscuits secreted in a pocket for this very day. He proffers one to Mertz, who has now woken up and is sitting close by, and the two men wish each other ‘happier Christmases in the future’.36 Mertz, forcing down some of Pavlova with a little ‘festive’ butter, hopes ‘to live to share many merry Christmases with my friend Mawson, but if possible, as a real festive occasion in the civilized world’.37
A future that starts now. For, at 2.30 am in this land of the midnight sun, they are up and away and depart into a 15- to 20-mph wind in a west-north-west direction.
While Mertz leads the way on skis, Mawson is hunkered down in his harness, hauling the sledge on his own through the snowdrift up a gradual incline.
After ten miles, up on a ridge, Mawson pauses to assess the situation. They are on the plain of that second major glacier they crossed after leaving Winter Quarters. Its ridges rise to the land on the far side, and he calculates they are now roughly 150 miles away from the hut, 68 degrees 41 minutes south, roughly halfway home. At 9.30 am, they pitch camp, heat the dreaded dog dish for dinner and fall yet again exhausted into deep sleep. Then, upon rising at 10 pm, they consume yet more of the dog stew, washed down by cocoa, and set off. A real Christmas to forget …
15 December to 26 December 1912, Adélie Land, Christmas comes to the other parties
Meanwhile, the other groups set in train from the hut to all parts of Adélie Land are struggling on in their own fashions, the best they can. As Christmas comes a’jingle-jangling along, Robert Bage’s Southern Party – comprising himself, Frank Hurley and Eric Webb – are on their return march from their thwarted attempt to get to the South Magnetic Pole, after constant gale-force winds had prevented them. (At least, however, their data has allowed for an update of its position to be calculated, proving it has moved from the time that Mawson, Mackay and David claimed its conquering on the Shackleton expedition four years earlier.) Now, though, after turning back ‘half glad, half regretful’38 that the wind is going their way, they are under full sail over occasionally high and hard sastrugi – with Webb, nevertheless, still stopping the party at regular intervals to record his magnetic readings, while Hurley takes his opportunity to document the passing scenery in timeless images. (This has not been easy, with Hurley noting in his diary at one point, ‘My camera is a bugbear and using it a nightmare. Every time I have to set the shutter I have to take a number of tiny screws from the front and bend the mechanism into shape … with frostbitten fingers!’39)
Because food stocks have run so low, the men have decided to hold over any festive meal and celebrations until they reach their 200 Mile Depot, a further two days’ march from their current location, meaning Christmas Day itself is spent negotiating sastrugi, trying to stop the sledges from overturning and fighting the 30-mph winds.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Coastal Party, led by Cecil Madigan, is making good progress, and Christmas finds the men already on the comeback trail from their farthest point travelled along the eastern coast, across the same two great glacier tongues that Mawson and his men crossed higher up.
As they make their Christmas camp on a broad glacier tongue that protrudes into the sea on the George V Land coast, little do they realise that their colleagues Mawson and Mertz are atop that same glacier further inland at around 1500 feet.
Chief Chef Madigan prepares a penguin dish equal to the occasion, and all men retire with their sheets of frost to their ice beds that night sated and content.
The Western Party of Frank Bickerton, Alfie Hodgeman and Dr Leslie Whetter, who, as planned, did not leave Winter Quarters until 3 December, laboured long and hard as they made their way around the western coast of Commonwealth Bay. Just a day after setting out, their air-tractor – which had been towing four sledges – had been rendered useless after its propeller had been smashed, and they had man-hauled one heavily loaded sledge thereafter in rough hurricane winds up to 80 mph. Though that had been a disappointment, the next day they made an important discovery: the first meteorite found in Antarctica, a large lump of over two pounds, which they carried with them thereafter. From there, it was just heavy hauling with little break in the supremely difficult conditions …
The melt from the snowdrift having almost totally destroyed their sleeping bags and ground sheet, a very unpleasant Christmas is spent in a cramped, snow-encrusted tent at high altitude and roughly 158 miles from Cape Denison.
Meanwhile, Frank Wild and his men at their base on the ice floe 1500 miles to the west of the hut have been going well. They have built their own habitation, ‘The Grottoes’, on the ice, and though in the first blizzard they lost their radio mast, and despite the fact that at one point their hut was nearly completely buried in snow, the main thing is that they have never woken up to find themselves atop a massive but diminishing iceberg in the Southern Ocean, as some of them have feared.
And they have gone on sledging trips to explore their territory. While Harrisson and Moyes have remained at the base, the rest of the men have split into two parties, with Wild taking his three-man sledging party to the east, as the leader of the other party, Doc Jones, takes his two men to the west – each party exploring and mapping much of the surrounding coast as they go.
Alas, Wild’s own push to the east was stopped only 147 miles from their base due to an impassable field of crevasses in a glacier.
At a spot 120 miles east of their Western Base, on this day Wild’s party celebrates Christmas with a surprise plum pudding – put there by Moyes – chased down with a snifter of spirits from the medical store. Following dinner, the Union Jack and Australian Ensign having been hoisted, Wild takes it upon himself to take possession of the land ‘for King George V and the Australian Commonwealth’.40
As to Doc Jones, his three-man expedition, which includes George Dovers and Arch Hoadley, left the Western Base on 7 November, headed west, and after a long and difficult journey manage on this very day to scale the loose-rubbled slopes of their destination, the volcanic plug of Gaussberg! Their every step sends whole square yards of the volcanic fragments sliding down, and – after a pause for Christmas lunch, which includes the plum pudding they have brought all this way – they soon arrive at the cone at the summit, where they find two cairns that had been left by the Germans of the ship Gauss, when they discovered this volcanic plug a decade earlier.
After leaving their own record, in their own cairn, the three men begin the descent. They decide that, on the following day, they will begin their journey back to the Western Base, some 234 miles to the east as the petrel flies, or 300 miles for them, due to relay work. And yet, they must push hard. It has taken seven weeks to reach this point, and they know they must return to their base before 30 January, when the men of Aurora are due to return upon their fine ship to pick them up.
Speaking of whom … there could be little greater contrast provided on this day than the position of Captain John King Davis and his crew on Aurora. Now fully provisioned and ready to go, the ship is securely docked once more in the port of Hobart, and the crew are dining the day away in that finest of establishments, Hadleys Hotel. The food is excellent, the beer is plentiful and the toasts to absent friends – on Macquarie Island and Antarctica – are many. So hilarious and high-hearted is the gathering that Davis has some fear, as he weaves his way back to the ship, that some of the crew may continue too long into the night and struggle to make their 10 am departure the next day, when they will be at last heading south to pick up, hopefully, all of those absent friends. Time and again throughout the year, Davis has worried most particularly about where he has left Wild and his men, and he is getting more anxious as the time now approaches to see whether they are all right, or whether he has made the worst decision of his life.
Boxing Day 1912, Hobart, Aurora leaves with a fair sea, a following wind and a Norwegian gift
Fortunately, all the sailors are there on time, and at 10 am sharp under a clear blue sky Aurora draws away from Hobart dock, cheered on by the crowds of well-wishers. Loaded on board – ready for the contingency of some expedition members staying for another year – are 35 sheep, 521 tons of coal and a fair amount of mail, plus, having stopped by Macquarie Quarantine Station, the 21 dogs presented to the expedition by Captain Amundsen. By noon, they are steaming towards Storm Bay – Antarctica bound!
28 December 1912, on the western side of the farthest east glacier, Mawson and Mertz play a game of shut-eye
And so they plod on, still over 135 miles away from the hut. Mawson notes:
Tramping over the plateau, where reigns the desolation of the outer worlds, in solitude at once ominous and weird, one is free to roam in imagination through the wide realm of human experience to the bounds of the great Beyond. One is in the midst of infinities – the infinity of the dazzling white plateau, the infinity of the dome above, the infinity of the time past since these things had birth, and the infinity of the time to come before they shall have fulfilled the Purpose for which they were created. We, in the midst of the illimitable, could feel with Marcus Aurelius that ‘Of life, the time is a point’.41
If only they didn’t feel so ill! Neither Mawson nor Mertz is quite sure of what exactly they are suffering from, only that it is getting worse. It is a day when they almost envy their last dog, Ginger, whose suffering is ended by one sudden slash of the knife across the neck. After some brief twitching, she is instantly at peace. Certainly, lying dead there in the snow, her eyes glassy, the blood from her neck slashing the whiteness, fate has not been kind to her, but has it, possibly, been kinder to her than to them? After all, Ginger feels no more exhaustion, no more pain, while they are suffering practically across the gamut of human ills.
Their next meal consists of the precious contents of Ginger’s skull, which Mawson throws into a pot and boils until it is ready. To decide who gets which side of the difficult to divide head, they use the tried and true ‘shut-eye’ method. Mertz closes his eyes and Mawson points to one side of the skull, before saying, ‘Whose?’ Mertz then says ‘mine’ or ‘yours’, and they eat from their respective sides.
Using wooden spoons they have made from one of the discarded sledge runners, they scoop out her brain, which, a little like the liver, is mercifully soft.
New Year’s Eve 1912 to 6 January 1913, further west of the farthest east glacier, Mertz gets a lift
It strikes Mawson at the time as a slightly curious request. Mertz asks whether it would be all right if he doesn’t have the dog meat on this day but instead eats exclusively from their normal rations. Maybe it is the dog meat itself that is making him feel so ill?
Mawson agrees, and that evening they dine like kings – kings! – eschewing the stringy remains of Ginger and instead having a couple of biscuits, covered with a thin layer of butter, together with some hot tea. (The only downside being that it makes them feel hungrier.) Alas, the following day, New Year’s Day 1913, if anything Mertz feels worse, and instead of trying to ‘blunder along in bad light’,42 Mawson decides it best they remain in the tent so Mertz can rest.
The problem, as Mertz notes in his diary on this first day of the New Year, is even clearer to him now than it was the day before: ‘Das Hundefleisch scheint mir irgendwie nicht zu bekommen.’ (‘The dog meat doesn’t seem quite to agree with me.’)43
It is at least a day when they can talk – there is little opportunity when they are pushing forward through the sludge or lying exhausted in their tent at the end of the day. After close questioning from Mawson, Mertz admits for the first time that he has been getting terrible abdominal pain. As Mawson has a constant gnawing sensation in his own stomach – otherwise known as hunger – this does not worry him unduly, as he presumes Mertz just has it worse. Still, as Mertz prefers on this day not to eat biscuit or dog meat, Mawson allows him some Glaxo from their precious stores, while he helps himself to a generous slice of Pavlova.
If there had been a choice at this point, then of course Mawson would have moved them both off dog meat, but, of course, there is no real choice. The only way they can make their normal rations last the distance is to return to the dog meat.
Two days later, Mertz’s strength appears to be all but gone, and it is all the Swiss man can do to get up and out and into his harness. And even when they do get under way, it is obvious to Mawson that Mertz – now with the added woe of frostbitten fingers, as the weather has turned even colder – is simply incapable of pulling his weight. Most of the hauling falls to Mawson, and despite making good time they are again forced to stop and camp.
To some extent, the cause is obvious. Both are slowly starving, their stomachs and joints ache, their nails are detaching, their hair is falling out and their skin is sloughing off in sheets. They are red raw in many sensitive places, most particularly around their thighs and groin. The cast-off skin inevitably works its way down into their socks, requiring them to regularly clean them out as best they can.
With such gnawing hunger and constant cold, sustained sleep is closer to an abstract notion than a reality. And yet, while Mawson is conscious of his own ills, he has become aware that his companion, Mertz, is suffering even more than him.
By the morning of 6 January, the situation has become so grim that the Australian has to help Mertz get out of his sleeping bag, and when it becomes obvious that the Swiss has no strength left to haul the sledge, the leader has no choice but to offer him a lift upon it.
Mertz, his face grey, his eyes flat, sways in the fiercely buffeting wind. He appears unsure whether or not to accept the offer. After all, this is what they have been doing to dogs. When they can no longer pull, they have been placed on the sleds to keep them alive just a little longer, so their meat will be fresher when they are shot or knifed at the next camp.
But yes, he knows he has no choice and clambers onto the sledge, but after only a short way he becomes so freezing through inaction that they are forced once again to prematurely pitch camp. Food is now obsessing them. Mawson attempts to cheer up a significantly depressed and feverish Mertz by suggesting that when they are aboard Aurora, which will be waiting for them once they get back, Mertz will once again serve up his trademark penguin-egg omelettes par excellence. It does not seem to help.
7 January 1913 and two days thereafter, 97 miles south-east of Cape Denison, Mawson prays to God
Mertz’s appalling condition has delayed their travel to the point where Mawson has long realised any further days spent resting will inevitably mean their scant supplies will be exhausted even sooner. While only 97 miles from Winter Quarters – a relatively short distance for healthy men – it’s ‘a lengthy journey for the weak and famished!’.44 Desperate to keep moving, the previous evening Mawson convinced Mertz that on this morning he would be placed on the sledge, where, cocooned in his sleeping bag, he would be transported under sail.
Now that the time has arrived to dress Mertz for departure, however, Mawson soon realises that despite the reasonable weather, once again this day will be without travel. His companion appears all but incapable of movement, and the only possible course is inaction. But inaction means certain death. Mawson records in his diary:
This is terrible. I don’t mind for myself but it is for Paquita and for all the others connected with the expedition that I feel so deeply and sinfully. I pray to God to help us. I cook some thick cocoa for Xavier and give him some beef-tea – he is better after noon, but very low. I have to lift him up to drink.45
During the afternoon, Mertz’s only real movement is that he soils his trousers, which requires Mawson to clean him up, before attempting to sit him up to take a little food. However, Mertz refuses any sustenance and now grows ever more delirious.
Nearing midnight, he appears to have some kind of fit, his whole body shaking as his eyes roll back in their cadaverous sockets, and it is some time before this internal bodily storm – with a source of energy that has completely escaped Mertz in previous days but is now strong enough that Mawson must hold him down – subsides around midnight.
Mertz is peaceful now, his ravaged, skinless body finally able to find blessed calm.
Mawson is decidedly less so. There is no way of getting around it – if he is to have any chance at all of getting back to base, Mertz must either rapidly improve or die quickly. They simply cannot stay where they are. It is with those desperate thoughts that Mawson finally drifts into an extremely restless sleep.
He awakens at 2 am and notes that Mertz is notably still. He reaches out and tentatively touches his face. It is not just cold but frozen. Mertz has breathed his last. His duty is done, and he has passed into ‘the peace that passeth all understanding’, as Mawson puts it.46 His verdict is straightforward: ‘Death due to exposure finally bringing on a fever, result of weather exposure and want of food.’47
For hours after the death, Mawson lies in his bag, turning everything that has happened over and over in his mind – strangely, the body of Mertz lying beside him offers a curious kind of companionship – as he tries to work out just what his own chances of survival are, beyond the obvious, which is next to none.48
His own physical condition is such that he is not far off collapsing himself, too weak even to hold himself up in certain positions, and his body is rotting from lack of nutrition before his very eyes, as frequently snow-blinded as they are. His every waking moment is one of constant pain clutching at him from within and without – hunger eats at his innards, frostbite at his every extremity, while his red-raw scrotum is little more than an agony factory. Though it cannot be denied that the sole upside of Mertz’s death is that his own food supply has suddenly doubled, it is still very doubtful whether the meagre rations of dried food and remaining dog meat will be enough to get him back to the hut, even if something else doesn’t kill him first. After all, he is not even sure if he will be able to break and pitch camp single-handedly.
The question has to be asked: should he just give up? It is so snug in his bag, it is such a bowl of total chaos outside it, he is still 97 miles from the hut and … he feels so tired … so tired … he is so alone and his situation so entirely hopeless …
Still, just as he has gained inspiration in the past from the words of Aurelius, he now gains some strength by reciting to himself some favourite lines from the Canadian Kipling, Robert Service, the same man whose poetry had inspired him long ago when he was sitting in the Refectory at the University of Sydney:
Buck up, do your damndest and fight,
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day.49
But always, of course, he comes back to the main thing: Paquita. He must at least try for her. Just weeks away from beginning her journey home from Europe, so she can meet him upon his return, she is waiting for his news, willing him on to safety. To honour her love, he cannot simply curl up and not go forward.
He resolves to make an attempt to survive against all the odds, formally recording in his notebook:
For many days now Xavier’s condition has prevented us going on and now I am afraid it has cooked my chances altogether … However I shall spend today remodelling the gear to make an attempt. I shall do my utmost to the last for Paquita’s and supporters’ and members of expedition’s sakes … 50
He hopes to at least get close enough to the hut that he can build a cairn in a sufficiently prominent spot to catch the eye of a search party, so his story could be told and Paquita would know what happened to him, and of his enduring love for her.
One thing is obvious. He need no longer haul any of Mertz’s gear. And, with nearly half the load abandoned, why doesn’t he proceed with just half the sled as well? For the rest of the day, Mawson uses a pocket tool to laboriously saw the wooden sled in half. He then makes a mast out of one of the discarded halves of the sledge and uses the other rail to make a spar. For a new sail, he takes Mertz’s Burberry jacket and whatever other material he can find and sews them together.
It all takes a great deal of time. Together with the blizzard that confines him to the tent for most of the day of Mertz’s death, it is not until the evening of 8 January that Mawson is able to gently drag the body of Mertz in his sleeping bag outside. Then, after delicately putting his friend’s face beneath the hood, he carefully piles snow blocks around his body – ashes to ashes, dust to dust, snow block upon snow block upon body upon snow block – before raising ‘a rough cross made of the two half-runners of the sledge’ at his head.51
Exhausted, Mawson moves back into his suddenly empty tent. It is the next day before he can get out again to read the same burial service that he conducted over the gaping grave of Ninnis, but even with that accomplished the weather is still too bad for him to recommence trekking.