PROLOGUE
p. ix“‘1st Penguin arrives Oct. 13th,’ which he underlines with a sweep of the blue-black ink.”; George Murray Levick, Zoological Notes Cape Adare Vol. 1. (Unpublished).
p. x“We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far”; Captain R. F. Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition: Volume I, Being the Journals of Captain R. F. Scott, R.N., C.V.O. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1913).
p. xi“He picks up his own pencil and writes, ‘Blowing hard all day.’”; George Murray Levick, diaries. (Scott Polar Research Institute, Unpublished).
PART ONE: THE LURE OF ANTARCTICA
ONE: VICTORIAN VALUES
p. 8“Here on one occasion I saw what I took to be a cock copulating with a hen.”; Douglas G. D. Russell, William J. L. Sladen, and David G. Ainley. “Dr. George Murray Levick (1876–1956): unpublished notes on the sexual habits of the Adélie penguin,” Polar Record 48, no. 247 (2012): 387–393. doi:10.1017/S0032247412000216.
TWO: TERRA AUSTRALIS
p. 24“Harmer writes to Ogilvie-Grant and says we’ll have it cut out, we’re not going to include it in the published version.”; Douglas Russell, recorded interview with author, Natural History Museum, Tring, July 22, 2013.
THREE: THE THREE NORWEGIANS
p. 32“Roald Amundsen is eight or nine when the story of Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition ‘captivated his imagination.’”; Roald Amundsen, The North West Passage: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the ship “Gjoa” 1903–1907 (London: Archibald Constable and Co., Ltd., 1908).
p. 36“here the unbound forces of the Antarctic Circle do not display the whole severity of their powers.”; C. E. Borchgrevink, First on the Antarctic Continent: Being an Account of the British Antarctic Expedition 1898–1900 (London: George Newnes Ltd., 1901).
p. 39“In it, he ascribes to Amundsen the comment, ‘Yes, sir, I love it’ when referring to the absence of women.”; Roland Huntford, Scott and Amundsen: The Last Place on Earth (London: Little, Brown Book Group, 1979).
p. 40“I stood in Nansen’s villa at Liysaker and knocked on the door of his study.”; Amundsen, The North West Passage.
PART TWO: ALL ROADS LEAD TO CAPE ADARE
FOUR: FIRST OBSERVATIONS
p. 47“It seemed, at a distance, so small and inhospitable that some of my staff felt constrained to remark at first sight of the place”; Borchgrevink, First on the Antarctic Continent.
p. 49“they have, as Bernacchi puts it, ‘only succeeded in excavating to a depth of about 4 inches.’”; Louis Bernacchi, To the South Polar Regions: Expedition of 1898–1900 (London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd., 1901).
p. 49“It was one of the most bleak and ungenial days imaginable . . . We were not sorry to leave that gelid desolate spot”; Ibid.
p. 51“reaching 78°50´S, ‘the farthest south ever reached by man’ as he will boast proudly afterward.”; Borchgrevink, First on the Antarctic Continent.
p. 55“many of their number form ‘their nests on the steep hillsides, even to a height of 1,000 feet”; Scott, The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’.
p. 55“He is equally impressed with the first human nest, noting that Borchgrevink’s hut ‘is in very good condition’”; Ibid.
p. 55“There were literally millions of them. It simply stunk like hell, and the noise was deafening.”; Beau Riffenburgh, Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition: The Voyage of the Nimrod (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005).
p. 56“The honour of being the first aeronaut to make an ascent in the Antarctic regions, perhaps somewhat selfishly, I chose for myself.”; Scott, The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’.
p. 56“The Captain, knowing nothing whatever about the business, insisted on going up first and through no fault of his own came back safely.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 58“it left in each one of our small party an unconquerable aversion to the employment of dogs in this ruthless fashion”; Scott, The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’.
FIVE: BOYHOOD DREAMS
p. 66“we find the Emperor penguin hatching out its chicks in the coldest month of the whole Antarctic year”; Edward A. Wilson. Appendix II. On the Whales, Seals, and Birds of Ross Sea and South Victoria Land, in The Voyage of the ‘Discovery’ (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1905), 352–374.
p. 72“and about how superior dogs were to what he called the ‘futile toil’ of man-hauling.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 72“We ourselves tried some substantial steaks and found the meat excellent.” Ibid.
p. 72“Amundsen hoists the Gjoa’s flag and they ‘went by the grave in solemn silence.’”; Amundsen, The North West Passage.
p. 72“The North-West Passage had been accomplished—my dream from childhood.”; Ibid.
SIX: LOST OPPORTUNITIES
p. 76“In 1907, Ernest Shackleton is determined to prove himself ‘a better man than Scott.’”; Peter Fitzsimons, Mawson and the Ice Men of the Heroic Age: Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen (Australia: William Heinemann, 2011).
p. 76“McMurdo Sound and the Ross Island area of Antarctica, which he regards as his ‘own field,’ as he puts it.”; Robert Falcon Scott, letter to Ernest Shackleton, March 18, 1907, Scott Polar Research Institute, MS1456/23.
p. 80“To the biologist, no more uninviting desert is imaginable than Cape Royds”; James Murray, Appendix One. Biology: Notes by James Murray, Biologist of the Expedition, in The Heart of the Antarctic: Being the Story of the British Antarctic Expedition 1907–1909 (London: William Heinemann, 1909).
p. 80“There is endless interest in watching them, the dignified Emperor, dignified notwithstanding his clumsy waddle”; Ibid.
p. 85“the Adelie appears to be entirely moral in his domestic arrangements”; Ibid.
SEVEN: COURTSHIP
p. 90“Throw up your cap & shout & sing triumphantly, meseems we are in a fair way to achieve my end.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 91“As he put it in a letter to her, it is ‘a man’s way to want a woman altogether to himself.’”; Michael Smith, Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer (Cork, Ireland: The Collins Press, 2014).
p. 91“Though the grip of the frost may be cruel and relentless its icy hold”; Eleanor Harding, “Shackleton’s Secret Lover: Polar Explorer Was So Smitten He Named a Mountain after Her,” Daily Mail, November 12, 2011.
p. 92“It is mounted in silver metal with a small plaque that reads ‘Summit Mount Hope’”; Ibid.
EIGHT: DECEPTION
p. 101“to ‘reach the South Pole and secure for the British Empire the honor of that achievement.’”; Diana Preston, A First Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998).
p. 102“its primary focus is ‘oceanographic investigation’ rather than being first to the North Pole”; Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1909, 14.
p. 102“‘a mystic look softened his eyes, the look of a man who saw a vision.’”; Hugh Robert Mill, The Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1923).
p. 104“a loose page has been inserted merely saying, ‘The Pole at last!!!’”; Boyce Rensberger, “National Geographic Reverses, Agrees Adm. Peary Missed North Pole,” Washington Post, September 18, 1988.
p. 106“I am preparing a purely Scientific Expedition to operate along the coast of Antarctica commencing in 1911”; Ernest Shackleton, letter to Robert Falcon Scott, February 21, 1910, Scott Polar Research Institute, MS367/17/2.
p. 109“We left Cardiff weather fine and calm.”; Victor Campbell, The Wicked Mate: The Antarctic Diary of Victor Campbell, an Account of the Northern Party on Captain Scott’s Last Expedition from the Original Manuscript in the Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland (Alburgh, UK: Bluntisham Books/Erskine Press, 1988).
p. 110“He would call it ‘the bitterest moment in my life.’”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 111“I beg your forgiveness for what I have done”; Ibid.
NINE: THE EASTERN PARTY
p. 113“He seems quite incapable of learning anything fresh”; Katherine Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H’: An Epic Story of Antarctic Survival (London: Pimlico, 2002).
p. 115“I hope it will never fall to my lot to have more than one wife at a time to look after.”; Edward Wilson, Diary of the Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic 1910–1912 (London: Blandford Press, 1972).
p. 115“BEG LEAVE TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC AMUNDSEN”; Tryggve Gran, The Norwegian with Scott: Tryggve Gran’s Antarctic Diary 1910–1913, edited by Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith, translated by Ellen Johanne McGhie (London: HMSO Books, 1984).
p. 115“Nansen’s reply is even more concise than Amundsen’s cable had been: UNKNOWN.”; Ibid.
p. 116“I think most of us feel regrets a (sic) leaving New Zealand, as we have all made friends”; George Murray Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen: Antarctic Journal November 1910–January 1912 (Perth: Freemantle Press, 2013).
p. 117“there was more blood and hair flying about the hotel than you would see in a Chicago slaughter house in a month”; Titus Oates, letter to his mother, November 23, 1910, Scott Polar Research Institute, MS1016/337/1.
p. 119“Campbell notes that, ‘We must hope for fine passage,’ but that is not to be.”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 119“which as Campbell nonchalantly observes is, “very slow work as the men were constantly being washed off their legs”; Ibid.
p. 120“More tender than beef steak and quite as good to eat”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 120“a really first class bird—rather like blackcock to taste, but a good deal better”; Ibid.
p. 120“the men sang, ‘in a horrible discordant manner to Adelie penguins that had gathered about the stationary ship”; Ibid.
p. 120“the penguins stood around, ‘cawing and bowing their appreciation.’”; Ibid.
p. 120“Herbert Ponting, the expedition’s photographer, or ‘camera artist’”; Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H.’
p. 121“Levick admiringly notes, ‘To his great credit he saved his camera and tripod.’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 121“I find I can’t get any information out of Ponting—He won’t give anything away.”; Ibid.
p. 121“Always I have had the feeling that Cape Royds has been permanently vulgarized.”; Meredith Hooper, The Longest Winter: Scott’s Other Heroes (London: John Murray, 2010).
p. 122“‘There is no trail of Shackleton there,’ he says to her”; Ibid.
p. 122“In the middle of the hut was a long table with the remains of their last meal”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 122“Priestley, who found the experience of going back to the hut where he had lived ‘very eerie.’”; Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H.’
p. 122“I expect to see people come in through the door after a walk over the surrounding hills”; Ibid.
p. 122“adult birds ‘bringing in food for their little downy youngsters’; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 122“been so well described by Wilson in his ‘Discovery’ reports that it is no good repeating them here . . .’”; Ibid.
p. 124“At least Priestley is glad to have ‘set the matter at rest finally.’”; Hooper, The Longest Winter.
p. 124“after he is woken and rushes on deck with the rest, ‘None of us needed to be told that it was the “Fram.”’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 125“all of them now waving their arms like ‘incurable lunatics.’”; Roald Amundsen, The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the “Fram,” 1910–1912. Translated from the Norwegian by A. G. Chater (London: John Murray, 1912).
p. 125“We had talked of the possibility of meeting the Terra Nova . . . but it was a great surprise all the same.”; Ibid.
p. 125“He looks older than Campbell expected, a ‘fine looking man’ with ‘hair nearly white.’”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 125“I think that no incident was so suggestive of the possibilities latent in these teams as the arrival of Amundsen at the side of the Terra Nova.”; Raymond E. Priestley, Antarctic Adventure: Scott’s Northern Party (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1914).
p. 125“The principal trump-card of the Norwegians was undoubtedly their splendid dogs.”; Ibid.
p. 126“We found them all men of the of the very best type, and got on very well.”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 126“others argue against it on the grounds that, ‘the feelings between the two expeditions must be strained’”; Ibid.
p. 126“In summing it up in his diary, he writes, ‘This has been a wonderful day.’”; Ibid.
PART THREE: CAPE ADARE
TEN: THE NORTHERN PARTY
p. 132“On this little patch of peninsular (sic), about a triangular mile in extent, we are absolute prisoners”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 132“Campbell wrote wryly in his log, ‘No sign of a possible landing anywhere.’”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 132“Borchgrevink’s hut is still standing there ‘in good preservation’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 133“the sixteen carcasses of mutton they have unloaded from the ship are ‘covered with green mould.’”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 133“I am sorry to say that a great many visitors we knock on the head and put in the larder”; Ibid.
p. 133“shown up at the hut in his fancy new suit of feathers only to be ‘taken for a stranger and killed’ by the men”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 133“the men move into their new quarters with much fanfare that includes ‘a great house warming”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 134“dear little things, and I hate having to kill them”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 135“The blizzards are only ‘a pleasant rest’ for the dogs”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 135“They are curled snugly under the snow and at meal times issue from steaming warm holes.”; Ibid.
p. 135“Meanwhile, the ponies are suffering: ‘so frozen they can hardly eat,’ observes Gran”; Gran, The Norwegian with Scott.
p. 135“But Scott will not tolerate perpetuating ‘this cruelty to animals,’ as he calls it”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 135“Oates says, ‘I’m afraid you will regret it, Sir.’”; Ibid.
p. 136“Bowers may well lament that he is left ‘carrying a blood stained pick-axe instead of leading the pony’”; Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910–1913 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1922).
p. 136“to protect the ponies from the cold, ‘It makes a late start necessary for next year.’”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 140“It surprises me very much to hear that Captain Scott has landed a party at Cape Adare”; Daily Mail, March 28, 1911, 9.
p. 140“For an hour or so we were furiously angry, and were possessed with an insane sense that we must go straight to the Bay of Whales”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
ELEVEN: THE WORST JOURNEY
p. 142“they manage to celebrate in style with champagne, brandy, cigars, and ‘an extended sing-song’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 142“Inside the hut are orgies. We are very merry—and indeed why not?”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 143“It took two men to get one man into his harness, and was all they could do, for the canvas was frozen”; Ibid.
p. 144“The horror of the nineteen days it takes us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier”; Ibid.
p. 144“writes Cherry-Garrard, ‘but when your body chatters you may call yourself cold.’”; Ibid.
p. 146“they try again, this time near the middle of the day when the darkness is not so ‘pitchy black.’”; Ibid.
p. 146“After indescribable effort and hardship we were witnessing a marvel of the natural world”; Ibid.
p. 147“we on this journey were already beginning to think of death as a friend”; Ibid.
p. 147“it was blowing as though the world was having a fit of hysterics”; Ibid.
p. 149“In these poor birds the maternal side seems to have necessarily swamped the other functions of life”; Ibid.
p. 150“I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care”; Ibid.
TWELVE: THE RELUCTANT PENGUIN BIOLOGIST
p. 154“As he writes, in a way that appears starker when written in his cursive script in the blue-black ink, ‘I killed them all’”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 154“and its stomach is full of ‘surprisingly large’ basalt stones and nothing else”; Ibid.
p. 154“Dickason describes it as, ‘the hardest blow we have had’”; Harry Dickason, Penguins and Primus: An Account of the Northern Expedition June 1910–February 1913 (Perth: Australian Capital Equity/Freemantle Press, 2013).
p. 155“we gazed seaward this morning and realized the astounding fact that the sea ice beyond the bay”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 156“attempting to get to Cape Wood, they ‘would have certainly been dead men’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 156“We cannot leave as long as the temperature keeps so low . . . it will be terrible for the dogs”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 157“I don’t call it an expedition. It’s panic.”; Ibid.
p. 158“I find it most correct with the good of the expedition in view—to dismiss you from the journey to the South Pole”; Ibid.
p. 159“Levick describes it as ‘the most trying night I have ever spent’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 159“‘A heartless business,’ as Levick calls it, but he justifies it as a kind of necessary cruelty.”; Ibid.
p. 160“A dead black throated penguin lay with a rope tied round one of its legs”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 160“the Finn Savio conceived rather a good idea of amusing himself”; Borchgrevink, First on the Antarctic Continent.
p. 161“Levick had started on a series of systematic notes, which are probably the most thorough that have ever been made; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 161“Have been reading up all I can find about penguins”; Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H.’
p. 162“Never write down anything as a fact unless you are absolutely certain.”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 162“he thinks much less of the men who would perpetrate what he calls, the “scene of tragedy I saw”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 163“each with about fifty couples, for special observation”; Ibid.
p. 163“intention is to remove all the eggs from this group as they are layed (sic)”; Ibid.
p. 163“A couple of minutes after I removed the eggs, the owners seemed to have forgotten the incident entirely”; Ibid.
p. 164“He describes Levick as ‘the slowest man I’ve ever met’”; Hooper, The Longest Winter.
THIRTEEN: THE RACE BEGINS
p. 166“It is ‘a brilliant test,’ he notes, of their meticulous precautions and preparations.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 166“they are, as Amundsen records on October 24, 1911, ‘enjoying life.’”; Ibid.
p. 167“A more unpromising lot of ponies to start a journey such as ours it would be almost impossible to conceive”; Titus Oates, Note, October 31, 1911, Scott Polar Research Institute, MS1317/2.
p. 167“Scott realizes now what awful cripples our ponies are and carries a face like a tired old sea boat in consequence”; Michael Smith, I Am Just Going Outside: Captain Oates–Antarctic Tragedy (Staplehurst, UK: Spellmount Ltd., 2008); but see Huntford, Scott and Amundsen, who quotes “seaboot” rather than “sea boat.”
p. 168“even Scott thinks ‘Amundsen with his dogs may be doing much better.’”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 169“the penguins throughout the colony have become ‘noticeably subdued’ with very little activity at all”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 169“the penguins resume their frantic ‘love making, fighting, and building’ of their nests.”; Ibid.
p. 169“the roar of battles & thuds of blows can be heard over the entire rookery”; Ibid.
p. 169“I conclude when I see two birds fight with flippers alone, that they are cocks.”; Ibid.
p. 169“he sees a penguin with its eye ‘put out’ by another’s beak”; Ibid.
p. 169“it was not unusual to see a strange cock paying court to a mated hen in the absence of her husband”; G. Murray Levick, Antarctic Penguins: A Study of Their Social Habits (London: William Heinemann, 1914).
p. 170“the mated cock has suddenly turned up and fought the interloper”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 170“male penguins newly arrived at the colony, as evidenced by their ‘spotlessly clean’ white breasts”; Ibid.
p. 170“marking her in Levick’s estimation as ‘unquestionably an old arrival and a bride long past her virginity.’”; Ibid.
p. 171“a neighbor ‘put out its beak and stole one of the pieces!’”; Ibid.
p. 171“he laments, ‘Unfortunately I am going away sledging for four days . . .’”; Ibid.
p. 172“the penguin is trying to sit on eggs ‘amidst a slush of melting snow, so that the eggs were nearly floating in water.’”; Ibid.
p. 172“the most striking fact about this rookery seemed to me to be the absence of open water for many miles”; Ibid.
p. 172“by November 20 he laments that ‘my photography (chiefly in work with Priestley) is taking a great amount of time’”; Ibid.
p. 172“Mated couples appear to fast absolutely until the first egg is laid, after which they go off to feed by turns.”; Ibid.
p. 173“the couples took turn and turn about on the nest, one remaining to guard and incubate while the other went off to the water.”; Levick, Antarctic Penguins.
p. 174“Levick records that the skuas ‘are stealing a large number of eggs.’”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 174“he notes that ‘a large number of nests in the rookery are now to be seen deserted.’”; Ibid.
p. 174“eggs in some nests ‘may have first been filched by skuas, and the nest then deserted’”; Ibid.
p. 174“he emphasizes that ‘the number of deserted nests is now very great indeed.’”; Ibid.
p. 174“he states that ‘The number of deserted nests continues to increase.’”; Ibid.
p. 174“as many are to be found on the ground, frozen, which have not yet been eaten by skuas”; Ibid.
p. 175“I daresay the cocks are the greater offenders in this respect . . .”; Ibid.
FOURTEEN: COMPETITION
p. 177“Amundsen chooses an especially daunting one: a steep, wide glacier marked by ‘crevasses and chasms,’”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 178“what Amundsen describes as ‘pit after pit, crevasse after crevasse, and huge ice blocks scattered helter skelter.’”; Ibid.
p. 178“Glittering white, shining blue, raven black . . . the land looks like a fairytale.”; Ibid.
p. 178“there was depression and sadness in the air—we had grown so fond of our dogs”; Amundsen, The South Pole.
p. 182“This afternoon I saw a most extraordinary site (sic).”; Russell et al., Dr. George Murray Levick (1876–1956).
p. 182“On returning to the hut I told Browning, hardly expecting to be believed”; Ibid.
p. 183“there must be a certain number of both cocks and hens wandering about who have been left out in the race for partners”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 184“he is so prepared to sacrifice the ponies, which Cherry-Garrard describes as ‘a horrid business.’”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 185“Amundsen has declared it a rest day ‘to prepare for the final onslaught.’”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 185“‘Sledges and ski glide easily and pleasantly,’ according to Amundsen”; Ibid.
FIFTEEN: TIMING
p. 188“‘owing to the wind the old birds are sitting very closely and there are probably many hatched already.’”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 188“Whilst the chicks are small the two parents manage to keep them fed without much difficulty”; Levick, Antarctic Penguins.
p. 188“To see an Adélie chick of a fortnight’s growth trying to get itself covered by its mother is a most ludicrous sight.”; Ibid.
p. 190“I think somehow we are the first to see this curious sight.”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 190“I have never known any man to be placed in such a diametrically opposite position to the goal of his desires”; Amundsen, The South Pole.
p. 191“Ski are the thing, and here are my tiresome fellow-countrymen too prejudiced to have prepared themselves for the event.”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 192“‘the perfect mass of crevasses into which we all continually fall; mostly one foot, but often two, and occasionally we went down altogether.’”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 192“Scott tells Atkinson ‘to bring the dog-teams out to meet the Polar Party’”; Ibid.
p. 192“The final advance to the Pole was, according to plan, to have been made by four men.”; Ibid.
p. 193“‘We started more than half an hour later on each march and caught the others easy. It’s been a plod for the foot people and pretty easy going for us.’”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 193“At present everything seems to be going with extraordinary smoothness.”; Ibid.
p. 194“He hoisted ‘the flag to signal to the hut.’”; Levick, A Gun for a Fountain Pen.
p. 194“The penguin chicks are able to walk now and huddle together in batches.”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
PART FOUR: AFTER CAPE ADARE
SIXTEEN: HOOLIGANS
p. 204“The cock did not seize the hen with his beak, by the feathers on the back of her head as chickens do.”; Levick, Zoological Notes.
p. 204“There is also an added note, written in a different light blue ink that says, “More notes on this later.”; Ibid.
p. 204“At first he wrote in English, ‘I saw a couple of penguins at an empty nest today, in the midst of a group of occupied nests.’”; Ibid.
p. 205“I saw another astonishing sight of depravity today.”; Ibid.
p. 205“As he put it so succinctly, ‘There seems to be no crime too low for these penguins.’”; Ibid.
p. 207“Nothing I had experienced in the Ross Sea or in any other part of the world came up to the gales and blizzards of Commonwealth Bay”; John King Davis, High Latitude (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1962).
p. 207“After a ‘pleasant and uneventful trip,’ according to Priestley”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 208“‘we would all have sworn that if there was one place along the coast which would be accessible in February, this would be the one.’”; Ibid.
p. 208“causing the pack ice and bergs to ‘bank up’ on its southern side, and then to ‘stream northwards’ from its tip”; Ibid.
p. 209“during the past ages the Antarctic has possessed a climate much more genial than that of England at the present day”; Ibid.
p. 210“‘This told us the whole story,’ writes Scott that evening.”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 210“Great God! this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority”; Ibid.
p. 210“I imagine it was intended to mark the exact spot of the Pole as near as the Norwegians could fix it.”; Ibid.
p. 211“Well, we have turned our back now on the goal of our ambition and must face our 800 miles of solid dragging”; Ibid.
p. 211“Bowers writes that they are ‘thinning’ and ‘get hungrier daily’”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 211“God help us, with the tremendous summit journey and scant food.”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 214“The first of these is that the chick’s downy coats become thick enough to protect them from cold”; Levick, Antarctic Penguins.
p. 214“The individual care of the chicks by their parents is abandoned, and in place of this, colonies start to ‘pool’ their offspring.”; Ibid.
p. 216“The crimes which they commit are such as to find no place in this book”; Ibid.
SEVENTEEN: WEATHER
p. 218“Wilson, the doctor, records that Oates’s ‘big toe is turning blue-black.’”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 218“‘The weather is always uncomfortably cold and windy,’ according to Wilson.”; Ibid.
p. 218“despite Scott noting that Evans ‘is going steadily downhill,’ the next day he allows Wilson to take rock samples”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 219“‘We cannot do distance without the ponies,’ Scott tells his men.”; Ibid., and Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 219“with nothing but glaring white ahead, darkened by snow goggles, it is simply a form of mental starvation”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 219“the way in which I as the chief character must avoid making such mistakes in the second.”; Ibid.
p. 220“A considerable number of adults are still in full moult, and a few have finished moulting”; Ibid.
p. 220“driving them one by one into the water in response to the newly found instinct to catch their own food there.”; Ibid.
p. 220“‘A very terrible day,’ as Scott observes.”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 220“the remainder of us were forced to pull very hard, sweating heavily”; Ibid.
p. 221“He is ‘on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes.’”; Ibid.
p. 221“It is a terrible thing to lose a companion in this way”; Ibid.
p. 221“‘Pray God,’ he writes in his diary”; Ibid.
p. 221“February 17th: Still blowing hard with drift”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 222“Levick’s nose gets ‘rather badly frostbitten.’”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 222“We are now a little anxious about the ship, which was due on the 18th.”; Ibid.
p. 223“Scott writes perceptively, ‘It is a race between the season and hard conditions and our fitness and good food.’”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 223“There is little doubt we are in for a rotten critical time going home”; Ibid.
p. 223“They have scarcely enough, Scott realizes, even with the ‘most rigid economy’ to get them to their next depot”; Ibid.
p. 224“Blizzards have kept them ‘practically confined to our bags for 13 days—a record I believe for any antarctic party, and it has been absolutely miserable,’”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 224“for them, cruelly, to spy what they think is ‘smoke on the horizon and under it a small black speck.’”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 224“Instead of their ship, it turns out to be ‘only an iceberg with a cloud behind it.’”; Ibid.
p. 225“the road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but to us it seemed probable that hell itself would be paved something after the style of Inexpressible Island”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 225“Campbell’s chances of relief are getting woefully small,” writes Wilfred Bruce”; Hooper, The Longest Winter.
p. 226“pack ice which they only manage to get out of ‘with much difficulty.’”; Ibid.
p. 226“‘Our faces shone in rivalry with the sun,’ Roald Amundsen, first man to the South Pole, will say”; Amundsen, The South Pole.
p. 227“I think of you and what you may wish, more than of him, and am in a strange mood”; Huntford, Scott and Amundsen.
p. 227“Nansen even goes on to say to her, “I wish that Scott had come first.”; Ibid.
p. 229“Scott notes fatalistically now, ‘The dogs which would have been our salvation have evidently failed.’”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
EIGHTEEN: DOGS
p. 231“I confess I had my misgivings. I had never driven one dog, let alone a team of them”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 231“asked that they increase the rations for the dogs because they were ‘losing their coats.’”; Ibid.
p. 232“‘the chance of seeing another party at any distance was nil.’”; Ibid.
p. 232“Ironically, they make ‘23 to 24 miles (statute) for the day.’”; Ibid.
p. 232“if he went under now, I doubt whether we could get through”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 233“Scott orders Wilson to ‘hand over the means of ending our troubles.’”; Ibid.
p. 234“Abbott, Browning & I have killed & butchered 8 seals”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 234“it is going to be a queer time for us through the dark months.”; Ibid.
p. 234“when we ought to be getting on with the sealing and work on the cave, and we are losing the sun daily.”; Ibid.
p. 238“According to Scott, ‘We knew that poor Oates was walking to his death’ and ‘tried to dissuade him.’”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 238“I am just going outside and may be some time.”; Ibid.
p. 238“remarkably, ‘at Wilson’s special request,’ Scott consents to the remaining three of them continuing to pull the thirty-five pounds”; Ibid.
p. 241“The wind increased to hurricane force, and suddenly one of the tent poles (on the lee side) broke with a snap”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 241“the pressing of the tent on them “produced a helpless suffocating sensation”; Ibid.
p. 241“they are unable to find anywhere sheltered enough to give them ‘the ghost of a chance’ of erecting their spare tent”; Ibid.
p. 242“‘I shall always remember the appearance of Brownings (sic) face,’ wrote Levick afterward”; Ibid.
p. 242“to spend ‘a most uncomfortable night’ according to Campbell”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 242“the prospect of the winter before us is enough to give anyone the hump I should think”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 242“They ‘have two days’ food but barely a day’s fuel’”; Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 242“Scott’s right foot is badly frostbitten: ‘Amputation is the least I can hope for now.’”; Ibid.
p. 242“the blizzard rages unabated and ‘outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift.’”; Ibid.
NINETEEN: WINTER
p. 244“what Priestley describes as the ‘visible darkness’ afforded by the faint light”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 245“We are settling into our igloo now, and a dismal hole it is too.”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 249“‘Campbell,’ he replies.”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 249“just then it seemed to me unthinkable that we should leave live men to search for those who were dead”; Ibid.
p. 249“Campbell’s men ‘might die for want of help.’”; Ibid.
p. 249“‘Were we to forsake men who might be alive to look for those whom we knew were dead?’”; Ibid.
p. 250“Levick describes it as ‘a great day of feasting.’”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 250“I have not realised how hungry I have been during the last month or so”; Ibid.
p. 250“Priestley says, ‘none of the famous wines of the world could possibly taste to us as did this,’”; Priestley, Antarctic Adventure.
p. 251“The hoosh flavoured with seal’s brain and penguins’s liver, was sublime”; Ibid.
p. 252“when they ‘once more went back to a subnormal allowance’ of food”; Ibid.
p. 252“His fur mit (sic) was nearly full of blood which soon froze into a solid block.”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 252“his hands are ‘filthy & soaked with blubber from the stove,’”; Ibid.
p. 252“I shall feel rotten about it if his tendons are cut”; Ibid.
p. 252“He observes, ‘The tendons of three fingers are cut I am sorry to say.’”; Ibid.
p. 252“‘We had another double hoosh,’ Campbell notes”; Campbell, The Wicked Mate.
p. 254“Levick, ever one to display his Victorian-bred roots, pronounces it ‘a most boring production.’”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 254“This inevitably involves ‘dining sumptuously at the various inns on the way,’”; Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H.’
p. 254“It is uncommonly cheering to think of the stretches of white dusty road at home at the present time”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 254“down the Saskatchewan, and writing about it, with plenty of good photographs”; Ibid.
p. 254“Campbell & I spend hours over planning my trip down the Saskatchewan.”; Ibid.
TWENTY: RETURN JOURNEY
p. 255“Personally I am looking forward to the sledge journey before us with mixed feelings”; Levick, diaries, Scott Polar Research Institute.
p. 256“Campbell says he means to start on or about the 22nd Sept.”; Ibid.
p. 256“The epidemic of diarrhoea continues in spite of precautions”; Ibid.
p. 256“Campbell 2. Levick 2. Priestley 4. Abbott 3. Browning 3. Dickason 2.”; Ibid.
p. 256“only to have Priestley come shuffling down the shaft ‘in the last extremity.’”; Ibid.
p. 256“Levick writes: “‘Our small stack of literature is disappearing fast.’”; Ibid.
p. 257“Midwinter’s feast on June 22: ‘One of the memorable days of our lives.’”; Ibid.
p. 258“‘I believe they thought we were ghosts,’ wrote Levick afterward.”; Ibid.
p. 259“then walks up to Cherry-Garrard, saying simply, ‘It is the tent.’”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 259“That scene can never leave my memory.”; Ibid.
p. 259“There is a loud crack ‘like a shot being fired’”; Sara Wheeler, Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001).
p. 260“It is the happiest day for nearly a year—almost the only happy one.”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 260“‘We were entirely free from fat, and, indeed, were so lean that our legs and arms were corrugated.’”; Lambert, ‘Hell with a Capital H.’
p. 261“There was no sound from behind except a faint, plaintive whine from one of the dogs”; Sir Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard: Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911–1914 (London: Ballantyne Press, 1915).
p. 261“Mawson and Mertz rush back to discover ‘a gaping hole in the surface about eleven feet wide.’”; Ibid.
p. 261“No sound came back but the moaning of a dog, caught on a shelf just visible one hundred and fifty feet below”; Ibid.
p. 261“After some hours ‘stricken dumb’ and calling forlornly down the crevasse”; Ibid.
p. 266“The Adélie penguin has a hard life: the Emperor penguin a horrible one.”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 266“With bright sunlight, a lop on the sea which splashed and gurgled under the ice-foot”; Ibid.
p. 267“They make a ‘thin soup’ for themselves”; Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard.
p. 267“is ‘tough, stringy and without a vestige of fat’”; Ibid.
p. 267“On sledging journeys it is usual to apportion all food-stuffs in as nearly even halves as possible.”; Ibid.
p. 268“A long and wearisome night”; Ibid.
p. 268“‘this is terrible; I don’t mind for myself but for others. I pray to God to help us.’”; Ibid.
p. 268“There appeared to be little hope of reaching the Hut.” Ibid.
p. 268“He is shocked by what he finds: ‘the thickened skin of the soles had separated in each case as a complete layer.’”; Ibid.
p. 270“‘Facing out over the Barrier, we gave three cheers and one more.’”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 272“Everything jet black & horribly greasy & smelling of blubber.”; Hooper, The Longest Winter.
PART FIVE: AFTER ANTARCTICA
TWENTY-ONE: THE DEPRAVITIES OF MEN
p. 278“The deity of success is a woman, and she insists on being won, not courted.”; Amundsen, The South Pole.
p. 281“We landed to find the Empire—almost the civilized world—in mourning.”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.
p. 281“Not here! The white South has thy bones”; Daily Mail, February 11, 1913, 4.
p. 282“Amundsen, she wrote in her diary, ‘looked unspeakably bored.’”; Kari Herbert, Heart of the Hero: The Remarkable Women Who Inspired the Great Polar Explorers (Glasgow: Saraband, 2013).
p. 282“Oh, well, never mind! I expected that.”; Lady Kathleen Kennet, Self-Portrait of an Artist: From the Diaries and Memoirs of Lady Kennet, Kathleen, Lady Scott (London: John Murray, 1949).
p. 282“‘Let me maintain a high, adoring exaltation, and not let the contamination of sorrow touch me.’”; Ibid.
p. 283“How awful if you don’t.”; Herbert, Heart of the Hero.
p. 283“addressed to her by Scott inasmuch as it says, ‘To My Widow.’”; Ibid and partially in Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition.
p. 284“I think the best chance has gone we have decided not to kill ourselves but to fight it to the last”; Herbert, Heart of the Hero.
p. 289“He found ‘the ship packed above and below by a mass of unfortunate men, the majority severely wounded.’”; Murray Levick, letter to Mayson Beeton, The Keep, Sussex.
p. 289“Many of the wounds had not been dressed since they left the field and were crawling with maggots”; Ibid.
p. 289“he tells Beeton, ‘refusing to return to my ship when they sent a boat for me.’”; Ibid.
p. 289“I was hoping that I would be court martialled, so that I could have an opportunity of making some sort of fuss”; Ibid.
p. 289“He notes that the wounded have been treated with ‘most scandalous neglect’”; Ibid.
p. 289“helping Levick ‘by throwing amputated limbs over the side.’”; Henry R. Guly, “George Murray Levick (1876–1956), Antarctic explorer,” Journal of Medical Biography 24, no. 1 (2014): 4–10.
p. 293“I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers”; Sir Ernest Shackleton, South: The Story of Shackleton’s 1914–1917 Expedition (London: William Heinemann, 1919).
p. 294“will always be able to enjoy it—certainly when you have forgotten all about it”; David Day, Flaws in the Ice: In Search of Douglas Mawson (Melbourne: Scribe, 2013).
p. 295“For scientific discovery, give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen”; Raymond Priestley, 1956 address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in which he paraphrased Cherry-Garrard introduction to The Worst Journey in the World.
TWENTY-TWO: AFTER THE WAR
p. 297“He had retired from the navy the year after Gallipoli, furloughed on the ‘grounds of unfitness.’”; Guly, “George Murray Levick (1876–1956), Antarctic explorer.”
p. 299“‘How wrong that is,’ she is reported to have said.”; Michelle Merrilees, “Lady Shackleton: The Full Story,” 2017, https://womenofeastbourne.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Lady-Shackleton-the-full-story.pdf.
p. 300“By her own count, she will have ‘three husbands and a hundred lovers.’”; Eric Utne, “Brenda, My Darling: The Love Letters of Fridtjof Nansen to Brenda Ueland,” Huffington Post, March 10, 2012, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/great-love-letters_b_1192446.
p. 300“Here from my window in my tower, I see the maidenly birches in their bridal veils against the dark pine wood”; Eric Utne, ed. Brenda My Darling: The Love Letters of Fridtjof Nansen to Brenda Ueland (Minneapolis: Utne Institute, 2011).
p. 303“Let me first fly to the Pole and back, and then we shall see.”; Tor Bomann-Larsen, Roald Amundsen (Stroud, UK: The History Press, 2011).
p. 305“We must acknowledge that in ascending the Barrier, Borchgrevink opened the way to the south”; Amundsen, The South Pole.
p. 310“With very great regret & sympathy I have to inform you that your son was accidentally killed”; Murray Levick, Expedition Notebooks, Archives, London: British Exploring Society.
p. 311“To Your Memory From Your Companions: for fuck’s sake Levick, is that the best you can do?”; Ibid.
p. 324“Color, which is the poet’s wealth, is so expensive”; Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard, ed., The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1961).
p. 324“Do I contradict myself?”; Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Philadelphia: David Mckay, 1892).
p. 325“And thus we sit together now”; Robert Browning, Dramatic Lyrics (London: Browning, 1842).
p. 326“All the world loves a penguin: I think it is because in many respects they are like ourselves”; Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World.