While passing the southern end of the Rockefeller Mountains we saw a superb peak, the resemblance of which to the Matterhorn was so striking as to suggest comparison instantly. Only its peak showed above the clouds. I believe we had sighted this same peak on the first eastern flight. I wrote a message on my chart, which I passed to Balchen. It said: “I see land to the East. Let’s try it.” So we headed for the peak.
We had risen to an altitude of 4500 feet.
The character of the surface began to change subtly and one could pick out where the snow lay deep and soft and where it had been hardened by wind into a firm crust. Once or twice we could make out where rough sastrugi ran over it, like ruffled water suddenly frozen into stillness, and we saw as well several odd little mounds. But for the most part the surface appeared quiescent and undisturbed; it is doubtful whether there has been any movement here in ages.
We had our eyes glued on the mountain, and to our chagrin it did not appear to draw nearer, although both planes were advancing toward it at the rate of about 100 miles per hour. The peak must, therefore, lie close to the 150th meridian, the eastern boundary of the Ross Dependency claimed by Great Britain and I realized with some satisfaction that the land that lay to the east could be claimed for the United States.
But as to the nature of that land, the size of the mountains which no doubt traversed it, we could not say then, for, as we watched, masses of clouds spread over the whole eastern horizon, blotting out Matterhorn. The sky was still clear to the southward and we, therefore, bore due south.
We flew south miles to Latitude 79° 30’ S. By this time we had penetrated far enough to hope we might be able to see the mountains and the “appearance of land” which Amundsen reported in Latitude 82°.1 This land and mountain he had taken to be a southern prolongation of King Edward VII Land and a definite link to the mountains trending northward from Carmen Land. No peaks arose to break the monotony of the Barrier, but far to the south we saw a dark streak flat on the horizon, tantalizingly vague. Could this be Amundsen’s land? It was so far away we dared not risk sending both planes toward it, as a satisfactory excursion must bring them rather close to the limit of the fuel supply, so we set our course to the northwest and headed directly for Little America.
The surface of the Barrier continued unchanged with rolling hills and valleys of snow and an occasional pressure ridge.
To the stretch of land running south of the Rockefeller Mountains, and east as far as 150th meridian, I decided to give the name of the man who, more than any other, awakened the modern world to the importance of the Antarctic—Captain Robert Falcon Scott.
Both planes landed at Little America after a flight of four hours and 15 minutes.
McKinley then asked permission to make a photographic mapping survey of the coastline between Little America and Hal Flood Bay. This was readily granted, and the Fairchild was refueled and made ready for a second flight. Smith was to pilot it, and Berkner was to serve as radio operator.
Because I was eager to attempt another assault on the pack to get over to the northeast, I hastened down to the City by dog team, and ordered Captain Melville to put out to sea as soon as possible. Just as I reached the ship, the Fairchild wheeled overhead in a parting salute and sped off across the Barrier. The sound of its passage filled the Bay and echoed for a long time in the Barrier cliffs.
I went at once to the radio room and there had an experience which is one of the most thrilling I have ever known. From the loud speaker attached to Hanson’s apparatus came a steady, throbbing roar—the sound of the Fairchild’s generator pulsing with a beat corresponding to the cycle of the engine. As the engine increased its speed, the roar deepened and filled the whole ship; and as the speed slackened, the sound tapered off. It ceased entirely when Hanson broke in to send a message, then would resume when Berkner fastened down the key. It was a comforting sound; for as long as it persisted, one knew that all was well.
The Fairchild reached Hal Flood Bay about an hour later, and reported heavy clouds to the east. I was rather surprised, therefore, when McKinley radioed, a short time later, that he had the Nunatak in view, and requested permission to fly over and photograph it. I could not understand how the Fairchild had managed to cover the intervening distance in so short a time, but nevertheless gave him permission. More than any other I might cite, the incident illustrates the great advance in modern exploration. An airplane flying at a rate of two miles per minute at an altitude of 6,000 feet in exploratory flight could be directed and governed by radio from a point miles away. How very different from the conditions that prevailed on this same continent scarcely two decades before; when exploring parties set out on their lonely journeys and remained in the fields for months on end, with no communication with their bases; and when Scott and Amundsen, with scarcely 450 miles between them, patiently waited out the winter to begin their competing dashes to the Pole, the one as ignorant of the other’s movements as if they had been separated by the Poles.
The contrast was heightened during supper when we heard, from the loud speaker, the sounds of Berkner “talking” with the Bolling and a short-wave station at San Francisco.
We had much fun at McKinley’s expense when a message, rather humbly worded, confessed that the outcropping of rock which he had taken to be the Nunatak was none other than the northernmost peak of the Rockefellers. He reported that he was flying high above them, for a photographic survey.
Some time later came a more exciting message. Far to the eastward, fifty miles or more from their position, he saw a mountain ridge headed by a high peak. This we took to be the Antarctic Matterhorn.
So, for the second time that day, the land we had discovered earlier was exposed to human gaze.
Beyond it lay what is, to all explorers, the true Promised Land of Discovery. I was eager to get over it; but at this advanced stage of the season, I deemed it prudent to defer any further extended flights until the following spring.
After mapping the Rockefellers, McKinley swung north again, then west, to make an oblique strip map of the coastline. Soon we heard the Fairchild overhead. It dipped low in greeting, then headed for Little America. We lost sight of it as it disappeared, in a curving glide, behind the Barrier; but were immediately assured by radio the landing had been accomplished without mishap.
McKinley had surveyed one hundred miles of unmapped coast line and the newly discovered mountains in a few hours—a job that would have taken many months by dog team or any other method.
The City meanwhile had groped a way through tattered patches of sea smoke caused by the colder air from the Barrier striking the warmer water, and stood out to sea. We rounded East Cape, which is the eastern portal of the Bay of Whales, and steered for Cape Colbeck.
3 A.M.
Tuesday
February 19th
At Sea
For cutting out for oneself the most miserable evening this earth offers, I most heartily recommend a night in an old sailing ship in Antarctic waters during a severe storm. There is nothing like it—at least nothing within my experience.
The weather is so thick one might cut it with a knife, or, better still, hack it apart with a hatchet. The wind is so strong that, even with a full head of steam and steering a course a few degrees off its eye, the old tub can hardly make its way against it.
We crest a wave and the propeller races with an abandon that threatens to tear it apart. I stood near the helmsman a while ago and the lash of spray and drift on the face was positively blinding. We could barely see beyond the waist of the ship. The wind twangs and plays on the rigging an unearthly tune.
We are constantly menaced by bergs which we cannot see until they evolve out of the mist, and they come gliding distressingly close alongside. More than once, I thought the City must give up the ghost.
Down below, in the engine room, it is frightful. The din is maddening, and the unrestrained pitching and tossing swiftly upsets the firmest footing. I take off my hat to Mulroy, Teddy Bayer
, O’Brien and Sutton. They have kept us afloat this night.
It is bitterly cold. The spray falls on the deck as ice, and the air is choked with spindrift which cuts the face.
We have surrendered all hope of getting to the east by ship, and are struggling to return to the Bay of Whales. With bad luck, we lost sight of the Barrier, and no doubt have been blown somewhat off our course. Melville, Adams, Strom and Erickson have had a very tough time. And have done well. Melville was up nearly all night.
I’d give much for a sight of the sun.
7:30 o’clock
Same day
Bay of Whales
We’re back at the berth again, and I have no taste, at least for the moment, for further eastern excursions in the City. She’s a fine old ship, the toughest of them all, as she proved last night, but she is no pleasure craft.
To continue the earlier entry: as I feared, we were well off our course. Blind as bats, we were heading merrily, under a full head of steam, sails set and a strong wind behind, when the sun suddenly appeared over the low mist in time for us to get a line on it with the sun compass.
This gave us our true direction and we found that we were headed straight for the cliffs of the west Barrier and we· changed course, rather hastily, I confess. The old ship came about in one of the fastest maneuvers she ever made.
We then steamed slowly into the wind, and in an hour sighted the Barrier.
About seven o’clock we reached our berth. The sun was shining dully and dissipating the mist.
The City has become a bejewelled ship. Every spar and every line glitters with a solid casing of ice.
A stiff easterly wind is blowing, and our perch is none too secure. But now that we are here, we shall try to stay awhile. Every one is in need of rest.
The thermometer is tumbling. Winter cannot be far away. The sun is curving lower at the horizon.
We must get the City away.
In the scattered moments of calm that were allowed us during Wednesday and Thursday, we finished putting ashore the last of the supplies. Great masses of floe and bergs drifted down on us constantly, forcing us to shift our berth several times. Thursday morning, we were alarmed to discover that pancake ice had frozen about the ship while she lay, and the bay had frozen over near the east Barrier. All information I had been able to gather previously indicated that the ship would not be in danger of “freezing in” before March 1st. But all signs pointed to an early winter, and I was determined to send the City north before she became a permanent resident. With the small reserve of coal left in her bunkers, she could not long struggle against heavy ice.
So, on Thursday, we made for the east Barrier, to lay down several bases in the bays for later airplane flights from Little America, and to make a last few soundings near the Barrier. Toward evening, we ran into heavy fields of thick slush ice., with perhaps a hundred yards of open water between fields. Progress became increasingly difficult, and the wind, after we rounded East Cape, freshened to gale force, blowing snow in great sheets from the Barrier. Oddly enough, Little America reported at the same time a perfect calm. Gradually the fields of slush widened until their edges touched, and before long we were completely surrounded by heavy, congealing mush. Our situation was undeniably hazardous. A cessation in the wind must cause this mass to freeze instantly into solid ice, for the night before the thermometer recorded a new low of 19° below zero.
At ten o’clock, Captain Melville gave orders to come about, but when we tried to tack ship, she refused to reply. Ice, we found, had frozen about the rudder, and the combined strength of half a dozen men brought no response. Axes and saws fixed to long poles were brought into play, and after considerable hacking, which was not easy work in the gale, we managed to wear around. We made for the Bay of Whales, and five hours later were again tied up to the bay ice. The trip, though unsuccessful from one point of view, was significant from another. It proved, more vividly than theory could, that the City could not risk her presence in the Bay of Whales another day.
Accordingly I gave orders to Captain Melville to cast off at once. I know I shall never forget the moments that followed. Once more it was necessary to split the expedition into two divisions, and this time they could not be brought together before the following December. There was not a man among the 83 who left New Zealand who did not harbor in his heart the ambition of becoming a member of the Winter Party. But not all could join that group, which we had previously limited to 40, and for which number we had provided. More, it was obviously necessary to keep both vessels staffed with trained crews, and their work, in the larger purposes of the expedition, was not one whit less important than that of the winter party. But making that clear was not easy, for men whose minds have set up one ideal are reluctant to concede suddenly the equal worth of another. In the end, we increased the winter party by two—Quin Blackburn and Jim Feury, because we found we needed them. The hardest job I ever faced was when I told “Kid” Berlin, a fireman on the City, that Chief Engineer McPherson absolutely needed him on the voyage back, and we could not therefore let him remain. Tears streamed down his face, but he smiled at the same time, and without a word carried out his orders. He had worked like a fiend during unloading operations, and if ever a man deserved reward, Berlin deserved it. There were several equally bitter things I had to do before the City went. Teddy Bayer, an engineer on the City, had been equally helpful and I would have asked him to join the winter party had Chief Engineer Esmond O’Brien been able to spare him from the City’s engine room.
I tried to tell them all, just before the City left, how greatly we appreciated their help and sportsmanship; and it was a strange thing to talk to a score of men, with bay ice as a platform and the listeners crowded about the rail of an old sailing ship, and a subsiding storm hurling spindrift across the Bay. Civilization was 2,300 miles away, and somehow words did not seem to matter. It is a feeling we came to know better in the Antarctic. An understanding wordlessness comes to take the place of language. And I feel that we reached it then.
We watched them weigh anchor, and move away with a flutter of canvas. Soon only the City’s masts and spars stood out above the writhing sea smoke, and presently these were gone. The 42 of us were left alone to our problems.
It was almost impossible to believe that the most important preliminary operation of the expedition—the unloading of the ships—was actually accomplished; that 225 tons of supplies from the City and 440 tons from the Boiling had been unloaded and carried to the base, under really dangerous conditions, without the loss of a man and only the loss of one or two sacks of coal. Some statistician had already figured out that the sledges had travelled a total of 12,500 miles in the shuttle operation between the ships and Little America. To realize, as I did then, that this trying and undeniably difficult piece of work had been accomplished by greenhorns for the most part, was to bring real satisfaction. What had once been regarded as almost impossible was now done well and behind us.
It was too cold to stand for long on the bay ice, with the temperature at 29° below zero; our parka hoods were covered with frost. So we got aboard the dog teams which had been sent down to meet us, and journeyed to the base.
It was a journey which I had made several times before, but now my senses were more alert to the surroundings, and I would be remiss not to describe the trail, or rather the approach, to Little America. To the southeast the Barrier rose in the form of a cape, the walls of which glittered with blue diamonds and curved, higher up, into an overhang modelled perhaps by the wind. Behind this cape, the trail bore sharply to the east, and as Goodale raced his team around the curve the narrow corridor of Ver-sur-Mer Inlet opened before us. The ice floor of the inlet was now entirely covered in snow, which in turn was littered with crystals as large as marbles. In the sun these shone like jewels, and the whole inlet sparkled with thousands of pin points of radiance. The sledge runners grated against and sometimes crushed these crystals as they struck, and then whirred on the smooth, hard sn
ow.
The old pressure ridges still lifted their shattered structures in the air, and we sighted several seal holes. The scene was in truth alive with colors, the blue in the ice cliffs to the North fading imperceptibly into the roseate hues of the Barrier. After we traversed the bay, the trail rose gradually, then with increasing steepness. The dogs had to dig in, bellies flat against the snow, to gain leverage, and their breaths discharged like jets of vapor from a valve.
A last pull, and we topped the rise. Little America lay before us. And we saw the three houses, with only a few feet of orange sides showing above the snow, the black hulks of the airplanes, the three spidery wireless masts spreading filaments of wire 65 feet above them, and underneath groups of beetle-like figures moved busily about.
Some distance behind the houses scores of crates and boxes lay in a shapeless pile, with the yellow heads of gasoline drums showing here and there above the snow. Stretches of tarpaulin showed where other caches lay protected from the elements. A line of brown tents and white ran through the center of the settlement, and nearby were the dog crates. From the mess hall, perhaps I should call it the kitchen, came the sounds of considerable activity and a welcome column of smoke. Tennant was preparing supper.
Behind the colony to the eastward, the Barrier curved around to form the basin. This basin was about a mile in diameter. The rim was formed by a series of little hills of snow except at the entrance to the west where it descended into Ver-sur-Mer Inlet. Here the houses were grouped. On the eastern rim ran a line of haycocks and crevasses. Far away, the valley disappeared into the flank of vaguely seen hillocks. East, north and south was the eternal Barrier, rolling and indefinite, glowing with strange, swiftly changing warm colors.
This was our home, and, now that the City was gone, we pitched in to make it firm and snug against approaching winter.
Little America Page 17