‘Where’s all the meat?’ Helmer complains. ‘You’ve only given me pemmican with all the dried veggie bits.’
‘Hold your horses. It’s down the bottom.’ Oscar fails to hide his exasperation. ‘Drink your soup, then you can let loose on the meat.’
The sounds of slurping are followed by immediate feedback of the sort any chef would welcome.
‘This is delicious.’
‘Mmmm, outstanding.’
‘Such rich flavour.’
‘Just like my wife’s, only better!’
‘Your wife cooks dog?’ Bjaaland asks Helmer incredulously.
It’s nice to share a laugh after many weeks of stress and sniping. Amid the uncharacteristic jocularity, Oscar takes his first tentative sip. The flavour is indeed rich with a gamey intensity that is otherwise lacking in their usual pemmican suppers. It’s just protein, Oscar tells himself. His mouth responds with a rush of saliva. Spooning tasty mouthfuls from his cup with enthusiasm, he assesses the others. Amundsen and Helmer are already finishing up their serving with one eye on the pot. Helmer reaches in and skewers a chunk of meat. Amundsen follows suit. Both men gnaw their way through two, three bits, drawing in the cool air of the tent to whisk away the dense heat of the tasty morsels.
‘Hey, leave us some,’ howls Sverre.
‘Chewy,’ says Helmer, his mouth full and issuing steam as he speaks.
Amundsen gives a crooked smile as his teeth peel the meat back from a sliver of bone that has found its way into the pot.
Helmer dives in for a fourth time. Bjaaland grabs his sleeve. ‘Learn your table manners from the dogs?’
Helmer seems genuinely surprised at the rebuke. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘How many bits of meat have you had?’
Sverre uses the opportunity to secure a few cuts for himself. He points to the pot and raises his eyebrows at Oscar in silent invitation.
‘Five pieces each,’ Oscar says, lifting his cup to his mouth and sucking in the savoury dregs of his first course. The taste lingers pleasantly. His tongue explores every nook and cranny for shreds of meat. Now for the scary part.
‘I’m done,’ says Amundsen, sitting back and drawing his sleeping bag up around his shoulders. ‘If anyone decides he doesn’t want his share, I’ll help him out.’
Muffled sneers give him an indication of his luck in that department.
Oscar closes his eyes and takes his first bite. Judging it out of ten, Oscar thinks maybe a six would be in order. The meat seems rather tough and in need of salt. It’s certainly lacking the kind of melt-in-the-mouth quality he would find appealing in a meat dish back home. But ultimately he must admit it’s very satisfying to be chewing something for once. He may yet grow to love it.
CHAPTER FORTY
Just how long this will go on nobody can say for sure, but the roar outside the tent sends a clear message – the blizzard is not ready to release them just yet. It’s the fifth day of their confinement. The air is thin at 3000 metres. Helmer complains that even rolling over leaves him breathless with the effort. The temperature has dropped considerably. There is no alternative but to lie in their sleeping bags bored out of their minds. Bjaaland can think of nothing but stretching his skier’s legs. Outside, amid the swirling vortex of snow, the remaining dogs sleep off their mammoth feast. Hopefully it will restore their depleted reserves of fat.
They’ve all railed against the protracted storm. Now it’s Sverre’s moment to give voice to frustration. ‘I’m sick of this tent, I’m sick of sleeping, I’m sick of scribbling in this diary about doing nothing. If I have to lie here another day I’ll scream.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Bjaaland says wearily. Rather than turn vocal, he’s retreated into his own skin. He learnt his lesson about venting his spleen back on the Axel Heiberg Glacier.
‘If we’re not first at the pole, we might as well not have left Norway,’ continues Sverre.
There’s a pause.
‘Why don’t we just head out,’ says Oscar. ‘Anything is better than this.’
Bjaaland murmurs in a noncommittal way and steals a glance at Amundsen, who is lying on his back, evidently lost in thought. His breath escapes in even clouds from his sleeping bag and his eyes watch the hypnotic flapping of fabric as the storm sucks at the tent.
‘What do you think, chief?’ asks Sverre, suddenly cheered by the prospect of action.
‘If we all agree, then why not?’ Amundsen says without moving. A smile plays about his lips. The men are becoming more like him every day.
The tent is severely iced up. The act of folding could tear it if they don’t take great care. Amundsen shouts into the wind like a general as pellets of ice, hard as gravel, break free from the tent and pound his face. Visibility is limited to a few metres. The sledges, buried under mounds of snow after five days, have to be dug out and repacked. Helmer hurriedly builds a depot. All the supplies they can jettison – spare alpine rope, heavy crampons, Sverre’s sledge, which is hoisted onto its end – are piled up alongside the rigid carcasses of fourteen dogs.
Finally, Oscar jams a broken ski upright in the snow. It’s his silent offering to the ice gods. ‘Can’t be too careful in this fog,’ he says.
Harnessing the reluctant dogs requires serious manhandling and strong language, but before long they are ready to move on, five men and three dog teams, into a ferocious gale. It is nearly impossible to keep their eyes open. The snow is as fine as sand and penetrates every hole and crevice of their clothing. It catches on the fur of their anoraks and hoods and frames their faces in a filigree of frost that soon hardens to armour. Cheeks freeze, the skin becoming candy red before turning hard and white. Noses, chins, jaws succumb to frostbite. Every now and then the men must massage life into the trouble spots with their bare hands, which they hurriedly slip back into reindeer gloves.
Amundsen goes ahead as forerunner. In the whiteout conditions, staying upright is his most pressing challenge. He might as well be blind. Melted together, the sky and land make a mockery of the world about him. Is he going up or going down? Several times he tips over like a toy soldier. The surface feels gritty; skiing on sand would be easier. Every now and then a break in the clouds allows the sun to reveal utterly alien scenery. Each time they struggle to make sense of it. Are those mountains or is it merely a bank of rising mist? The dogs are not troubled by such concerns. There is only the thrill of being in the harness together. The wide plain offers level ground for their exuberance but even as the terrain shifts downhill, their pace does not alter. Soon they are bounding with unreasonable haste down a steep incline into thick fog.
This is madness. No visibility. Blindly galloping towards some ghastly end – a cliff, a crevasse, a chasm large enough to swallow the lot of them. ‘Halt!’ Amundsen shouts.
Oscar cries out in alarm, having reached the same conclusion. Helmer and Sverre manage to bring the teams to heel only with extreme skill.
‘We go no further today,’ Amundsen says to the assembled team. Breathless, each man nods in silent agreement. Making camp on a hillside is far from ideal. Everything will be done on an uncomfortable lean tonight.
That’s an important lesson, thinks Amundsen. We should never give in to our impulses.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Sleep does not come easily. Altitude is undoubtedly playing havoc with the body’s natural rhythms – breathing, digestion. And all the red meat consumed over the last few days is sitting like lead in the gut; Amundsen knows its effect on his haemorrhoids will be pure agony.
This snail’s pace is infuriating for the chief. The pole may be within reach but conditions are beyond certain. He hates the fact that the ground is falling away. At 3000 metres they should have done with all of that. They should be on the flat. Already at 86 degrees south and not through the mountains? Amundsen forces himself to concentrate on the four degrees of latitude that remain. Perhaps a week lies between them and Shackleton’s world record of 88 degrees, 23 minutes, assuming they ma
intain their pace. To pass that point would deliver a boost to morale. But the infernal delays imposed by heavy weather, fog, wind drift, a treacherous surface and sticky snow offer the scenario Amundsen most fears – that they will only arrive after Scott.
‘Stop your bloody snoring!’ Amundsen shouts.
The bodies rearrange themselves. The snoring ceases. It’s 3 a.m. Suddenly aware of how much brighter it appears outside through the tent fabric, Amundsen wriggles free of his sleeping bag and slouches over to the flap. He delivers a swift kick to Sverre’s sleeping form as the wheezing starts up again, but then realises it’s Bjaaland who’s responsible for the hideous sounds. He kicks him too.
The dogs look up as Amundsen appears. The chief takes in his surroundings for the first time. In a rare show of generosity, the sun has offered a glimpse of the landscape. Amundsen is dressed lightly. He folds his arms tightly across his chest for warmth and walks a short distance to see what lies beyond the tent. A couple of animals let out an expectant yap. Satisfied that no immediate peril awaits them on their chosen path, he returns to bed. Small careful steps will see them through, day after day after day in this wilderness of white summits and ridges and hillsides and plains. They just need to keep at it. Soon enough they’ll reach the Antarctic Plateau proper. They have to.
They break camp by 8 a.m. to face yet another day of obstacles. The route plunges down then up again. It feels like they’re conquering a mighty sea one huge frozen wave at a time. The dogs lurch, stagger and scrape their way to the top of each hard-packed drift then stumble down the other side, sinking to their shoulders in the loose snow that has pooled in the hollows between the massive swells. Poor desperate creatures, thinks Amundsen; perhaps they should lighten the loads? A depot of ice-hard snow is hastily erected and a black provision crate placed on top.
Setting off again, the men are thankful for a brief window of sunlight. The panorama would inspire poets. A mountain rises at least 4500 metres into the air and appears topped with a crown of colossal ice crystals. The giant presides over a sea of enormous glaciers which tumble downwards in horrible disarray. The largest of them stretches right across their path as far as the eye can see. Gnarled and violently misshapen, it’s like a dragon’s tail on an unimaginable scale.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ says Amundsen, half in awe, half in dread. ‘It looks like someone’s lifted the continent above their head and smashed it down in anger.’
‘It’s old,’ says Helmer. ‘Look how it’s all filled in with snow. There’ll be a way through. Sure to be.’
Binoculars reveal a possible approach. Heads together, the men discuss the best way to tackle the task. And then, seemingly on cue, the weather closes in. The monster retreats into the gloom. As if the challenge wasn’t great enough already, now they will have to pick out the route from memory.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ Amundsen says, trying to be philosophical in the face of dreadful luck. ‘Staring at the immensity of this glacier would put any man off attempting to cross it.’
Sverre and Amundsen rope up and gingerly establish a path between crevasses. Helmer, Bjaaland and Oscar accompany the three dog teams in careful convoy, all too aware that any misstep could be fatal. The dogs proceed with an almost human sense of caution. Last to cross, Oscar feels a sickening thud as the snow bridge collapses under him. The dogs bark. He snatches at his sledge, hauling himself clear of the void. The dogs skitter forward, alarmed by the abrupt jerk and even more by Oscar’s panicked cry. Safety by a hair’s-breadth. Oscar can’t help but look down. The depth of the blue hole makes his guts surge. Instinctively he reaches for the nearest dog and buries his face and both hands into its fur.
‘You alright, Oscar?’ Helmer calls back.
It takes him a moment to answer. ‘Yes,’ he says finally.
Meanwhile Sverre and Amundsen have their own challenges.
‘How can we go any further? It’s pure chaos,’ Sverre says with a doleful look on his face.
Amundsen can see for himself the impossibility of their surroundings. ‘The Devil’s Glacier’, they’ve started calling it. The only rational course is to hold their position.
Amundsen calls to Helmer. ‘We’re going set up camp. But I need you to come on a scouting mission. Let’s find a way through this labyrinth.’
Helmer is weary. He’d prefer to retire to his sleeping bag. But refusing the chief is unthinkable. ‘Come on, Helmer,’ says Amundsen. ‘It’s like finding a way through the Northwest Passage all over again.’
‘Yeah, nothing to it,’ Helmer replies with a sneer. ‘Only took us three years.’
With growing frustration, the two men soon realise they must endure 2 kilometres of ducking and weaving between gaps and crevasses to travel a fraction of that distance in the right direction. The wind has whisked away more snow, revealing ancient blue glacial ice. Skis offer limited function on such a slippery surface. And where are the crampons? As fate would have it, abandoned with all the equipment deemed surplus to requirements back at the Butcher’s Shop depot. This could spell the end of their journey. The race lost over such a trifle. Amundsen clenches his jaw so hard he thinks it might shatter.
Helmer will not give up. He manages to pick a path, making headway even if it can only be measured in metres, tacking east then west over snow bridges that look set to disintegrate under his weight. Up an incline, slowly down a slope, between pressure ridges thrust up like municipal buildings until it seems they can tend southward again.
‘Take a look at that!’ he shouts.
A long wall of ice, rising 6 metres or more into the air, blocks their route. Clearly it has been standing guard for some time, judging by the large opening that the wind has carved at its heart.
‘If this is the Devil’s Glacier then that must be Hell’s Gate,’ says Amundsen.
The two men establish a pathway and, with a bit of careful sidestepping, manage to look through the hole. They both agree that the going appears better on the other side.
‘See? What did I tell you?’ says Helmer. ‘Nothing to it.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Back at Framheim, the final preparations are being made for another journey into unknown territory. The exploration of King Edward VII Land lacks the glamour of the polar journey, but it might prove a consolation prize should the main party fail to reach the pole.
Prestrud, Stubberud and Johansen’s rudimentary investigations will take them deep into the eastern stretches of the Great Ice Barrier. They’re also charged with surveying and mapping the Bay of Whales and its immediate surroundings. Finally, Amundsen has asked that they get on top of hut maintenance. They may need to spend a second winter holed up in Framheim’s homely confines. The last request turns out to be the most taxing, and the days are full of chores. Keeping their network of tents and tunnels free of snow is a full-time job, but entirely necessary. The roof of the coal store has already collapsed under the weight of accumulated snow.
In the midst of the hustle and bustle, Johansen has time to reflect on what he considers a most unreasonable punishment. Once they return to Norway, Prestrud and Stubberud will have the excuse of damaged heels to explain their exclusion from the polar journey; Johansen will still be nursing his damaged pride. The disastrous September start is still a sore subject. Nobody seems inclined to discuss it. Johansen does the only thing he can think of to get the weight of his calamitous downfall off his chest – he writes to his wife:
When one is so far away and left to one’s self in the great loneliness, one broods about one thing or other … For my part, I can still be glad that I have not suffered any injury, but still possess my indomitable strength … I did not get to the pole, I naturally would have liked to … we did good work. But you know the great public asks who has been to the pole. Well, I don’t care. I dare to say that nevertheless I have also helped the Southern Party to reach the pole, even if I couldn’t be on the final assault, and I know that I was appreciated by those with w
hom I worked … Ah well, as things are, it has all turned out for the best.
Having written it, he doubts he will ever send the letter. They no longer live together and they certainly never speak. His wife hates him in fact – and with good reason. It is with great shame that he recalls the last time he ever saw her. Blonde hair hanging loose about her face after he tossed a bucket of cold water over her head. He had pushed her outside then and locked the door. It was midwinter. It’s a small miracle the poor woman did not freeze to death.
‘How many times must I ask you? Clear your things from the table, Hjalmar,’ scolds Lindstrøm.
Johansen folds the letter and slips it into his pocket. The others are about to eat supper. Despite Lindstrøm’s protestations, he excuses himself and takes a solitary walk to the edge of the sea ice to try and banish the blackest thought that has ever entered his mind. But he knows, one way or another, it will catch up with him.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
They are mythic in size, crevasses hundreds of feet across and possibly thousands deep. At least they’re easy to spot. In fact the men can’t help peering over the side with a sort of stomach-churning glee. ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ they have a fondness for saying. Long skis are three times blessed when crossing treacherous-looking sections of rotten surface; more so when skimming over innocent-looking stretches of pristine snow. Misplaced confidence can crumble in an instant.
‘Whoa!’ Helmer shouts, pivoting on his heels.
A mighty crust breaks away under the back of his skis with a dull booming sound, revealing a void that has been waiting a thousand years to swallow a man. This is a land of traps and snares. Not long after, Oscar’s dogs disappear into a hole and must be hauled up one at a time, utterly bewildered. Amundsen takes it as a sign to make camp. Ironically, there is solid ice underfoot and they must secure the tent pegs with an axe. Five kilometres of progress, that is all they have to show for their day of hard slog. It’s woeful compared to their usual distance. Twice since setting out across the glacier they’ve decided to take a rest day but then can’t resist the temptation of continuing when the latest observation places them ever closer to Shackleton’s record. At the crest of every ridge, hope reigns supreme – will their troubles be over? Disappointment and dismay are the answer more often than not. But gradually the nature of the Devil’s Glacier is changing. Perhaps the end is in sight.
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