“Harold, a bag of food overboard,” I said to June. He signalled to McKinley. The brown bag was pushed out and fell, spinning, to the glacier. The improvement in the flying qualities of the plane was noticeable. The Floyd Bennett took another breath and renewed the climb.
Now the down-currents over Nansen became stronger. The plane trembled and rose and fell, as if struck bodily. We veered a trifle to the right, searching for helpful rising eddies. The issue was still in doubt and Balchen’s irritation with the inexorable laws which limited our altitude waxed and grew profane. The head of the pass was still on a level with the plane’s line of flight. Balchen was flying shrewdly. He maintained flight at a sufficient distance below the absolute ceiling of the plane to retain at all times enough maneuverability to make him master of the ship. But he was hard pressed by circumstances; and I realized that unless the plane was further lightened, the final thrust might bring us perilously close to the end of our reserve.
“More,” Bernt shouted. “Another bag.”
McKinley shoved a second bag through the trap door, and this time we saw it hit the glacier, and scatter in a soundless explosion. Two hundred and fifty pounds of food—enough to feed four men for a month—lay on that lifeless waste.
The sacrifice was the saving factor. The plane, literally, rose with a jump; the engines dug in and we soon showed a gain in altitude of from 300 to 400 feet. It was what we wanted. We would clear the pass with about 500 feet to spare. Balchen gave a shout of joy. It was just as well. We could dump no more food. There was nothing left to dump except McKinley’s camera. I am sure that had he been asked to put it overboard, he would have done so instantly; and I am equally sure he would have followed the precious instrument with his own body.
The next few minutes dragged. We moved at a speed of 77 nautical miles per hour through the pass, with the black walls of Nansen on our left. The wing gradually lifted above them. The floor of the plateau stretched in a white immensity to the south. We were over the dreaded “Hump” at last. The Pole lay dead ahead over the horizon, less than 300 miles away. It was then about 9:45 o’clock (I did not note the exact time. There were other things to think about).
Gaining the plateau, we studied the situation a moment and then shifted course to the southward. Nansen’s enormous towering ridge, lipped by the plateau, shoved its heavily broken sides into the sky. To the right of it Ruth Gade’s tented arch gradually became, as we watched, a white inverted porcelain bowl. A whole chain of mountains began to parade across the eastern horizon. How high they are I cannot say,1 but surely many of them must be in excess of 15,000 feet, to stand so boldly above the rim of the 10,000 foot plateau. Peak on peak, ridge on ridge, draped in snow garments which brilliantly reflected the sun, they extended in a solid array to the southeast. But can one really say they run in that direction? The lines of direction are so bent in this region that 150 miles farther on, even were they to continue in the same general straight line, they must run north of east. This is what happens near the Pole.
However, such preoccupations did not bother us then. We were on a flight of discovery, and wanted to see things and record them. To bring them nearer, we had soon edged the course slightly to the east of the southern course we had taken. McKinley’s camera, which had never ceased to operate, trained on them, taking a succession of oblique, overlapping mapping photographs. Far to the left I made out what appeared to be the largest glacier we had yet seen, discharging into the new range we had first observed on the base-laying flight.
We laid our line of flight on the 171st meridian.
On the right was a range, which appeared to trend to the south nearly to 87° and more or less parallel to and perhaps a little beyond the 180th meridian—a line of low-hung peaks standing above the swelling folds of the plateau. Now, with the full panorama before us, in all its appalling ruggedness and gothic massiveness, we had a conception of the ice age in its flood tide. Here was the core, the center point of the Antarctic ice sheet. How deep it lay under us, whether 1,000 feet or feet, we could not tell. But deep it must be, thus to dominate nearly all but the highest peaks which rimmed it, like the walls of a dam. Seeking an outlet to relieve its incalculable pressures, it presses through the passes which become glacial spillways, and makes for the sea. The parade of the mountains, the contrast of black and white, the upreaching peaks and the trisulcated troughs of the glaciers, the plateau spreading to an illusory horizon—it was something never to be forgotten.
The plateau seemed to be falling in a slope to the south. Our altitude was then between 10,500 and 11,000 feet. We were “riding” the engines, conscious of the fact that if one should fail we must come down. Once the starboard engine did sputter a bit, and Balchen nosed down while June rushed to the fuel valves. But it was nothing; to conserve fuel, Balchen had “leaned” the mixture too much. A quick adjustment corrected the fault, and in a moment the engine took up its steady rhythm. Moments like this one make a pioneering flight anything but dull; one moment everything is lovely, and the next is full of forebodings.
The drift indicator showed a variable wind from the east. To compensate for it, we had to point the nose of the plane an average of about 12° to the east, in order to steer a straight course for the Pole. The influence of the drift on the course was always a bothersome element. It had to be watched carefully, and any change in the angle of drift detected at once, so as to make good a straight course south. Fitted in the floor of the plane was a drift indicator which McKinley used in connection with his photographic work, and during the flight he constantly checked the drift with me. Whenever I noted any change in the direction or strength of the wind, I would steady Balchen on his course with the sun compass, first shaking the trolley line to attract his attention, then waving him on to the new course.
The basis of these calculations was the ground speed; and owing to the impossibility of determining the height of the plane above the snow, this value was not easily accessible. The altimeters register altitudes, only in reference to sea level. There is a way, however. By timing with a stop watch how long it takes a crevasse, sastrugi or smoke bomb to run the length of the drift indicator wire in the floor of the plane, and then turning north and passing over the object again, timing it a second time, it is possible by mathematics to get the speed.
Consequently, I spent a great deal of time kneeling on the floor of the plane, sighting sastrugi whenever I detected any change in drift. It was by no means a comfortable position. The temperature had dropped steadily since we reached the plateau, and when I opened the trap-door a torrent of sub-zero atmosphere swirled in, numbing my face and hands.
These readings showed that while the engines were cruising at about 100 miles per hour, the plane was actually moving over the snow at the rate of 90 statute miles per hour.
The character of the plateau surface varied from time to time. There were stretches of smooth, soft snow, colonies of domed haycocks and arrow-headed sastrugi. To have been forced down in these latter areas would have been as dangerous as being forced down in a rock-strewn field. From the time we reached the plateau its level appeared to fall gently toward the Pole; the altimeter showed that the Ford was maintaining a fairly steady ceiling at approximately 11,000 feet, and the plateau fell farther below.
While the mountains on the left were still in view, I attempted to shoot the sun with the sextant to get its altitude. This would give us a sun line which would cut our line of flight and at the point of intersection tell us what the sun had to say about our progress. The air, however, was slightly rough; the powerful center engine, laboring to keep the heavy load at an altitude of two miles, produced a weaving in the plane; and the most patient efforts failed to bring the sun and the bubble together long enough for a dependable sight. This was bothersome, but relatively unimportant at the time. We were quite confident as to the accuracy of the dead reckoning, and hoped that conditions would improve in the vicinity of the Pole.
From time to time June “spelled” B
alchen at the controls; and Balchen would walk back to the cabin, flexing his cramped muscles. There was little thought of food in any of us—a beef sandwich, stiff as a board, and tea and coffee from a thermos bottle. It was difficult to believe that in recent history the most resolute men who had ever attempted to carry a remote objective, Scott and Shackleton, had plodded over this same plateau, a few miles each day, with hunger—fierce, unrelenting hunger stalking them every step of the way.
Between 11:30 and 12:30 o’clock the mountains to the eastward began to disappear, gradually of course, dropping imperceptibly out of view, one after another. Not long after 12:30 o’clock the whole range had retreated from vision, and the plateau met the horizon in an indefinite line. The mountains to the right had long since disappeared.
At 12:38 o’clock I finally shot the sun. It hung, a ball of fire, just beyond south to the east, 21° above the horizon. So it was quite low, and we stared it in the eye. The sight gave me an approximate line of latitude, which placed us very near our position as calculated by dead reckoning. That dead reckoning and astronomy should check so closely was very encouraging. The position line placed us at Lat. 89° 4½’ S., or 55½ miles from the pole. A short time later we reached an altitude of 11,000 feet. According to Amundsen’s records, the plateau, which had risen to 10,300 feet, descended here to 9,600 feet. We were, therefore, about 1400 feet above the plateau.
So the Pole, the mysterious objective, was actually in sight. But I could not yet spare it so much as a glance. Chronometers, drift indicators and compasses are hard task-masters.
Relieved by June, Balchen came aft and reported that visibility was not as good as it had been. Clouds were gathering on the horizon off the port bow and a storm, Balchen thought, was in the air. A storm was the last thing we wanted to meet on the plateau on the way back. It would be difficult enough to pass the Queen Maud Range in bright sunlight; in thick weather it would be suicidal. Conditions, however, were merely unpromising: not really bad, simply not good. If worse came to worse, we decided we could out-race the clouds to the mountains.
At six minutes after one o’clock, a sight of the sun put us a few miles ahead of our dead reckoning position. We were very close now. The sight was a check, but I depended more on the previous sight. At 1:14 o’clock, Greenwich Civil Time, our calculations showed that we were at the Pole.
We turned right and flew three or four miles. Had we turned right just before reaching the Pole, one could say that we had turned westward; but having reached the Pole we really turned northward, because all directions at the South Pole are north. We now reversed our direction, which had been northward, and flew toward the Pole again. Our direction then was southward, although at right angles to our previous line of course, which was also southward. It is difficult, therefore, to speak of directions during these maneuvers. For example, the moment we crossed the Pole again after this second change of course our direction, which had been southward, instantly became northward, although we were still on the same straight line.
We continued on the same straight line of flight for about six miles, and this took the plane about three miles beyond the original line of flight we had followed from the mountains. Then we cut diagonally across an extension of our line of flight, which we hit five miles beyond the Pole. At 1:25 o’clock we turned back—toward the Pole and Little America.
It is a confusing place, this imaginary point, the South Pole. All time meridians converge there. A person unfortunate enough to be living in the vicinity would have difficulty in telling just what time to keep. Time is reckoned by the interval between two successive crossings of the sun over the meridian at the place at which the time is reckoned. As all meridians intersect at the South Pole, there is no particular meridian. The sun circles the sky at the same height above the snow horizon, and this height changes only an imperceptible amount every twenty-four hours. Directions, as we reckon them, would likewise mean nothing to this unfortunate creature. For unless he were travelling either north or south, it would be impossible for him to walk in a straight line and still retain the same direction. His direction would change noticeably every few minutes; and to keep his original direction he would be forced to follow a spiral course.
A few minutes after the turn I opened the trap door and dropped over the calculated position of the Pole the small flag which was weighted with the stone from Bennett’s grave. Stone and flag plunged down together. The flag had been advanced 1,500 miles farther south than it had ever been before our expedition reached the Antarctic. June radioed the following message to Little America: “My calculations indicate that we have reached the vicinity of the South Pole. Flying high for a survey. Byrd.”
The altimeters indicated our altitude as 11,000 feet.
For a few seconds we stood over the spot where Amundsen had stood, December 14, 1911; and where Scott had also stood, 34 days later, reading the note which Amundsen had left for him. In their honor, the flags of their countries were again carried over the Pole. There was nothing now to mark that scene; only a white desolation and solitude disturbed by the sound of our engines. The Pole lay in the center of a limitless plain. No mountains were visible. In the direction of Little America visibility was good, and so it was on the left. But to the right, which is to say to the eastward, the horizon was covered with clouds. If mountains lay there, as some geologists believe, they were concealed and we had no hint of them.
And that, in brief, is all there is to tell about the South Pole. One gets there, and that is about all there is for the telling. It is the effort to get there that counts.
We put the Pole behind us and raced for home.
The mountains to the eastward came into view again, one by one. But whereas before the southernmost peaks had stood out clear and distinct, they were now confused by haze and clouds. The clouds were travelling fast, threatening to close in ahead of us, and if we valued our skins, it behooved us to beat them to the pass.
We were then riding the 168th meridian to Axel Heiberg Glacier. It was my intention to return somewhat to the eastward of the original course, in order to bring within range as much new territory as was possible. McKinley, who had photographed the area to the eastward on the way to the Pole, was then mapping the area to the westward. By that time his camera must have seemed almost as heavy as the mountains he was photographing. But his efforts never slackened. When the highest mountains to the eastward came into view, he mapped them as well.
Time began to crawl. It was a case of hitting the pass of Axel Heiberg Glacier ahead of the clouds or being sorry. The wind was then astern and helping us considerably. At first it maintained a fairly steady direction, then shifted and hit the Ford dead astern. Of course, its direction varied from time to time. Our speed increased. About two o’clock, seeking a still stronger wind aloft, we climbed several hundred feet and here found a fairly stiff following wind. With that boosting us, we hurried over the plateau. At three o’clock Balchen opened the throttles wide and a short time later we climbed about 400 feet higher. At this level the wind was even stronger. We commenced to make a speed better than 125 miles per hour. Our altitude was between 11,500 and 12,000 feet.
About half past three o’clock Balchen’s face broke into a smile. Ruth Gade’s conical turret was off the starboard bow. There was Nansen off the port bow. Soon W. Christophersen came into view, a small rounded dome between Ruth Gade and Nansen. The charts, photographs and descriptions which I had culled from Amundsen’s book, as well as the photographs which McKinley had taken on the base-laying flight, were before me: and as each new prominence appeared and fell neatly into its expected place, we were delighted. Our return course had been straight and our position coincided with our dead reckoning position. The flight was almost done. Best of all, the pass was clear.
We edged to the left, to bring Axel Heiberg’s corridor into view. Then we changed course to the right, to examine a depression to the right of Ruth Gade. While moving toward it, we noticed still another pass to the lef
t of Ruth Gade, apparently the most accessible of all, and decided to make for that. The maneuver brought Don Pedro Christophersen into full view. He was a good-sized fellow. But how very beautiful was Ruth Gade!
A few clouds were beginning to gather in the passes to the right and left. We had outstripped the main advance.
By 3:50 o’clock we had passed over the head of the glacier, sinking lower all the time, and glided down the shattered terraces between the precipitous sides of Ruth Gade and Don Pedro Christophersen. The glacier we were following debouched into Axel Heiberg. The air in places was very bumpy, and the loose gear in the plane was tossed about rather wildly. Nansen’s noble summit showed above Don Pedro Christophersen, a stern but kindly spectator of the descent.
We emerged from the glacier shortly after four o’clock.
June finished with his calculations of the fuel supply and reported there was a slight margin over needs. There was enough, then, to make further inquiry into Carmen Land, so we continued to the eastward. McKinley, I decided, ought to photograph the area.
We were now over the Barrier, and we could see how the shearing movements of the Barrier, where it pressed against the feet of the mountains, had resulted in very deep and extensive crevasses in several areas. What mighty pressures must be at work, to rip that tough fabric as if it were silk. The extensions of Queen Maud Range and the new mountains which we had seen on the base-laying flight were on our right, a solid rampart extending to the south of east. They were almost wholly covered with snow and some were broken by glaciers of considerable size and beauty. Indeed, what is, I think, one of the most beautiful glaciers in the world lies about 30 miles from our mountain base. I saw it for the first time then and was struck with its wild loveliness. It was wide and curving, a glacial river, and we could look up into it for miles.
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