And so Shackleton frequently sought Hurley's opinion, and he was careful to compliment him on his work. He also assigned Hurley to his own tent, which appealed to Hurley's snobbishness and also minimized his opportunities for gathering other latent malcontents around himself.
Several other tent assignments were made with an eye to avoiding trouble. Shackleton shared No. 1 tent with Hudson, the navigator, and James, the physicist, as well as Hurley. Although neither of these men was by any means a troublemaker, Shackleton seemed concerned that they might cause friction if they were in close contact with the others too long.
Hudson was just as he had always been, simple and a little irritating. His attempts at humor were often more foolish than funny because he lacked perception. He was a young dandy, a little impressed with his own good looks, but really not too sure of himself. As a result of this fundamental insecurity, he was quite self-centered and a poor listener. He could be counted on to interrupt any conversation to inject something about himself - even though what he said bore no relation to the subject being discussed. And his self-centeredness made it difficult for him to tell when his leg was being pulled, as was the case in the practical joke from which he got his nickname, Buddha. Strangely, he seemed to enjoy a joke on himself - at least it gave him the chance to occupy center stage. Shackleton was not at all fond of Hudson, but he preferred putting up with him to inflicting him on others.
As for James, he probably never should have gone with the expedition at all. He had had an academic background and a rather sheltered upbringing. He was a scholar and an extremely capable and dedicated scientist, but in practical matters he was very unhandy and a little unwilling. The adventurous side of the expedition, which was its chief appeal for most of the other men, interested James very little. In personality, he was roughly the antithesis of Shackleton. For James's own sake, as much as for any other reason, Shackleton took him into his own tent.
The assignment of McNeish to No. 2 tent under Wild's care was also a calculated move. As a ship's carpenter, McNeish was a piaster craftsman. Nobody ever saw him use a ruler. He simply studied a job briefly, then set to work sawing the proper pieces - and they always fitted exactly.
But McNeish, though physically a giant of a nian, and proportionately strong, was fifty-six years old - more than twice the average age of the other expedition members - and he was troubled with piles. He was homesick, too, almost from the day the expedition sailed. In fact, nobody really understood why he came at all. Whatever the reason, McNeish tended to be querulous. And because of his long experience as a mariner, he fancied himself something of a'sea lawyer,' well versed in the rights of seamen. All things considered, Shackleton feltMcNeish could bear some watching, and he instructed Wild accordingly.
But even dour old McNeish was happy during the blizzard which blew up out of the southeast on November 6. Though it kept the men in their tents, and living conditions were miserable, they were certain it was giving them a considerable shove to the north. `We all hope it lasts for a month,' McNeish wrote.
It did last for forty-eight hours, and when the weather cleared, Worsley obtained a sight which showed they had been blown 16 miles northwest - a highly satisfactory run.
That afternoon, Shackleton went back to the ship with a small party and three of the dog teams to continue salvage operations. But the Eiidiiraiice had sunk another 18 inches, and was just about level with the surface of the ice. Further salvage would be impossible. Just before leaving, the party fired a signal bomb as a salute in farewell to the Endnraiice.
The men began the next day to build a lookout tower out of the odds and ends of spars and planking they had brought back from the ship. And McNeish went to work on a better sledge for the whaler, using some of the tremendously strong greenheart sheathing that had once protected the sides of the E,rclitra,icc from the ice.
The days now were considerably longer than the nights, with the sun setting about 9 p.m., and rising again near three o'clock in the morning. In the evenings there was plenty of light for reading or playing cards. Frequently Hussey took his banjo around to the galley tent where the flicker of flame in the blubber stove warmed his fingers enough to play, and there was always a good turnout of singers. The seven men under Worsley's charge in No. S tent instituted the practice of reading aloud each night. Clark was first, and he chose a volume inappropriately titled Science from an Easy Chair. Clark and his seven listeners lay snuggling together for warmth, arranged in a circle around the tent with their feet thrust under a pile of sleeping bags to generate a little collective heat. When it came to Greenstreet's turn, he elected to read Sir Walter Scott's Marmion. And Macklin allowed as how `I must confess I find his reading an excellent soporific.'
Underlying the optimism and good spirits of the party was a deep-seated confidence that their situation was only temporary. Things were certain to improve before very long. Summer was coming. They were positive that the drift of the pack, which had been at a creeping pace, would pick up speed. Even if it didn't, the summer weather would loosen the ice, and they could take to the boats.
On November 12, four days after the end of the blizzard, the wind swung around to the north, and suddenly summer seemed to arrive. The thermometer rose to a record 35 degrees, and several of the men stripped to the waist to indulge in the luxury of a wash in the snow.
Otherwise, the heat wave made living conditions increasingly miserable. During the daytime it was almost stiflingly hot in the tents - Shackleton once recorded a temperature of 82 degrees in his. Worsley insisted that he could actually see the snow turning into water. The surface of the floe became a quagmire of melted snow and rotting ice. Walking was treacherous because the porous ice would unexpectedly give way, letting a man plunge into a water-filled ice pocket up to his knees or even his waist. Sledging heavy seals back to camp was worst of all. The drivers were usually wet through when they returned.
But life had its compensations. The tight-fisted Orde-Lees, known to the men variously as the `Colonel,' the `Old Lady,' the `Belly Burglar,' the `Man of Action,' and a host of other derogatory nicknames, decided on November 12 to move out of No. S tent for a while.
Worsley, with sarcastic relish, described the reaction in his diary: `Sounds of bitter sobs and lamentations are heard this evening from No. S tent at the loss of their dearly beloved `Colonel' who has removed himself for a season to sleep in his store in the old wheelhouse. He indulgently yields to our earnest entreaties to continue to dine with us and comforts us with the assurance that he will return promptly to our Humble but Happy Home immediately we prepare to get on the march.'
Ocean Camp with its lookout tower
Of all the expedition members, Orde-Lees was undoubtedly the strangest. And probably the strongest, too. Before joining the expedition, he had been physical education director of His Majesty's Royal Marines, and he could easily have whipped any of the other twenty-seven men.Yet for all the abuse his crew-mates heaped on hint, Orde-Lees was never provoked into a fight. He would usually reply in a hurt tone of voice, `Now, really, you shouldn't say things like that.'
Still he was anything but a coward. In fact he was almost foolhardy in the risks he took. Out seal hunting, he would dash across leads of open water, leaping from one chunk of ice to the next while killer whales cruised around. Once during the darkest part of the winter when the bidiiraiicc had been beset, he found a bicycle in the hold of the ship and went out for a ride across the frozen floes. He was gone two hours in the perilous cold, and a searching party had to go out to find him. When he was brought back to the ship, Shackleton ordered him thereafter never to leave unless he was accompanied by another man, and instructed Worsley to see that he obeyed.
Thomas Orde-Lees
Orde-Lees had an enigmatic, childlike personality. He was fundamentally lazy, except for a few activities such as skiing, which gave him pleasure. But he was not ashamed of his laziness, and he made no effort to disguise it. Even in the most desperate circumstances, wh
en other men were on the point of collapse from fatigue, he seemed to openly shirk his duty. It was perhaps only his guilelessness about it that made him tolerable to the others.
As a storekeeper, however, he was excellent, at least under their meager circumstances. He suffered from a morbid fear of starving to death, so he was as miserly as possible with their stores. Several times Shackleton reprimanded him for issuing insufficient food.
He continually antagonized his tentmates. Frequently, when it was his turn to bring the pot of hoosh from the galley to the tent, he would get distracted along the way, so that the food was cold when it arrived. No amount of pleading, curses, or threats could get him to improve. He saved everything, and his collection of clutter occupied much more space than he was entitled to.
With Shackleton, however, he was obsequious - an attitude which Shackleton detested. Shackleton, like almost everybody else, disliked OrdeLees intensely and even told him so once. Characteristically, Orde-Lees dutifully recorded the incident in his diary, writing it in the third person as if he had been an onlooker during the conversation.
For all his undesirable traits, however, Orde-Lees appeared to be incapable of malice. Most of the men wrote him off as a fool, so that when he was most infuriating, he was also rather ludicrous.
Shackleton, who had been busily studying possible escape routes, announced on November 13 that he had formed a plan.
Their drift thus far appeared to be carrying them directly toward Snow Hill Island, about 275 miles to the northwest. It lay off the coast of the Palmer Peninsula and was probably connected to the peninsula by ice. If the pack opened enough to let them launch the boats in time, they might land there. They would then be in a position to travel overland about 150 miles to the west coast of the Palmer Peninsula, eventually arriving at Wilhelmina Bay, a frequent summertime stopping place for whalers. Once contact had been established with the whalers, their rescue would seen assured.
Shackleton planned to have a small party of four men make the overland journey across the S,ooo-foot glaciers of the Palmer Peninsula, while the rest of the party waited at Snow Hill for rescue.
There was no assurance that the plan could be put into effect; but even the remotest possibility had to be considered and exploited to the fullest. Hurley went to work filing down screws and fixing them as cleats into four pairs of boots for the men who might have to climb the glaciers. Shackleton himself pored over every available chart of the region, figuring out the best route.
That night, as if to underscore the precariousness of their situation, a noise like distant, muffled thunder rumbled through the pack.A new wave of pressure had begun, and 3,500 yards away they could see the ice once again attacking the ship. About y p.m. they heard the sound of a splintering crack, and looking over they saw her foremast come crashing down, carrying the Blue Ensign with it.
Chapter Four
Though their floe remained undamaged throughout the pressure, Shackleton, who did not want a false sense of security to develop among the men, issued an Emergency Stations Bill on November 15. Unlikely as escape was, every man was assigned a specific duty in case the party should suddenly have to strike camp. If their route was to be over the ice, the sledge drivers would harness their teams with all possible speed while the other men gathered stores and equipment, struck the tents, and then stood by the sledges. Or if, as they hoped, they could escape by water, they were to ready the boats.
But it was impossible to prevent a certain amount of complacency as the men became increasingly accustomed to the well-established day-in, dayout routine of camp life. The line of pale-green tents seemed now almost as familiar as the ship had been. Two of the tents were the conventional sort, with a bamboo pole in the center. The others - the `hoop' tents designed by Marston for the expedition - operated on the same principle as the sunshade on a baby carriage, and they could be set up or struck in a matter of seconds. Their ability to weather storms, however, was not equal to that of the center-pole variety.
Galley on the ice. Orde-Lees and Charles Green, the cook, at work
Each day in camp began at 6:3o a.m., when the night watchman drew off a tablespoon of gasoline from a drum in the galley and poured it into a small iron saucer in the bottom of the stove. He then lighted the gasoline and it, in turn, ignited strips of blubber draped on grates above the saucer. Hurley had fashioned the stove from an old oil drum and a cast-iron ash chute taken from the ship.
The stove sat in the center of the galley, which was itself little more than a makeshift windbreak, constructed of spars driven into the ice, over which pieces of sail had been stretched and lashed in place. The galley also served as the library, and the few books that had been salvaged from the Eiidiirairce were kept there in plywood packing cases. In addition, a chronometer hung on one post, a mirror on another.
As soon as the stove was burning, the night watchman awakened Green to begin breakfast. By seven o'clock, the men had begun to emerge from their tents to relieve themselves off behind some nearby hummocks. Many carried frayed toothbrushes, and on their way back they paused to clean their teeth with snow. The heavy sleepers who were not up by 7:45 were awakened by the night watchman, who went among the tents shouting, `Lash up and stow.' The men rolled up their sleeping bags and sat down on them to wait for breakfast - sometimes seal steak, sometimes canned fish, sometimes porridge or pemmican, and tea.
After breakfast, the men went about their customary chores. Green spent the morning making `bannocks.' These were lumps of fried flour, frequently mixed with dog pemmican or lentils or anything that would give them some flavor. And there was always ice to be melted into water.
Old Chippy McNeish, usually assisted by McLeod, How, and Bakewell, spent these days raising the sides of the whaler and one of the cutters to make them as seaworthy as possible. However, they were hampered by a shortage both of tools and of materials. Only a saw, a hammer, a chisel, and an adze had been salvaged. And McNeish had obtained his few nails by pulling them one by one out of the superstructure of the E,,diira,ice.
Hurley, too, was busy preparing for the boat journey. He was not only an excellent photographer but a skilled tinsmith as well, and he was now at work fashioning a primitive boat pump from a tubelike portion of the ship's compass binnacle.
The rest of the party spent their time hunting. Most of the men went out in pairs to look for seals while the dog drivers exercised their teams around the floe. Often while they were exercising the dogs, the drivers would see one of the hunting parties in the distance waving a small flag - the signal that a seal had been sighted. One of the teams would then go to bring in the carcass.
Killing the seal was usually a bloody business. Wild had brought from the ship a revolver, a 12-gauge shotgun, and .33-caliber rifle, but ammunition was limited. As a result, the men killed the seals by hand whenever possible. This involved approaching the animal cautiously, then stunning it across the nose with a ski or a broken oar and cutting its jugular vein so that it bled to death. Sometimes the blood was collected in a vessel to be fed to the dogs, but most often it was allowed to run out into the snow. Another technique was to brain the seal with a pickaxe. But the two surgeons discouraged this practice, for it often left the brains inedible and they were prized as food because they were believed to be high in vitamin content.
In the beginning a few of the men, particularly little Louis Rickinson, the chief engineer, were squeamish about this seemingly cold-blooded method of hunting. But not for long. The will to survive soon dispelled any hesitancy to obtain food by any means.
After lunch, which usually consisted of a bannock or two per man, with some jam and tea, the men went to work strengthening sledge harnesses, repacking equipment, or helping with the boats. The dogs were fed at S p.m., amidst a terrific amount of barking, and supper for the men was at fivethirty - most often seal hoosh, a bannock, and a mug of hot watered cocoa.
In the evenings, activities varied somewhat from tent to tent. There was the reading al
oud in Worsley's tent. In No. 1, Shackleton's four-man tent, invariably there was a game of poker, patience or bridge. The seamen and firemen in No. 4 tent also played cards or sat around `yarning.' The subject of sex was rarely brought up - not because of any post-Victorian prudishness, but simply because the topic was almost completely alien to the conditions of cold, wet, and hunger which occupied everyone's thoughts almost continually. Whenever women were discussed, it was in a nostalgic, sentimental way - of a longing to see a wife, a mother, or a sweetheart at home.
The official lights-out - a figure of speech since there was daylight now nearly sixteen hours a day - was at 8:30 p.m. A good many men turned in earlier, after removing their trousers and jerseys and possibly putting on a pair of dry socks. Nobody ever took off his underwear. Some men stayed up after the official curfew, though they had to talk in subdued voices. In the cold, crisp air any noise carried an unusually long distance.
By io p.m. everything was quiet in the camp except for the lone night watchman, patrolling among the tents and keeping an eye on the galley chronometer which told him when his one-hour tour of duty was over.
During these three weeks since the Endurance had been abandoned, perhaps the most striking change in the party was their appearance. Some men had always worn beards, and they were now just a little shaggier than before. But faces that had previously been clean-shaven were now covered with a scrubby, half-inch growth of whiskers.
And everybody's face grew filthy from the blubber smoke. It infiltrated everywhere, clung tenaciously to whatever it touched, and responded poorly to snow and the small amount of soap that could be spared for washing.
There were two schools of thought on the matter of cleanliness. Though any all-over bathing was out of the question, some men scrubbed their faces in snow whenever the weather permitted. Others purposely let the dirt accumulate on the theory that it would toughen their skin against frostbite.
Endurance, Deluxe Ed: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told by Alfred Lansing Page 9