Endurance, Deluxe Ed: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told by Alfred Lansing

by Alfred Lansing

  But at the same time, the basic egotism that gave rise to his enormous selfreliance occasionally blinded him to realities. He tacitly expected those around him to reflect his own extreme optimism, and he could be almost petulant if they failed to do so. Such an attitude, he felt, cast doubt on him and his ability to lead them to safety.

  Thus it was that the simple suggestion of bringing in three seals could be, to Shackleton's mind, an act of disloyalty. At another time he might have overlooked the incident. But just now he was hypersensitive. Almost everything he had undertaken - the expedition, saving the Eiclitra,ice, and two attempted marches to safety - had failed miserably. In addition, the lives of twenty-seven other men were in his hands. `I am rather tired,' he wrote one day. `I suppose it is the strain.' Then later, `I long for some rest, free from thought.'

  Matters did not improve during the next several days. The weather continued to deteriorate, which seemed hardly possible. Daytime temperatures climbed as high as 37 degrees, with long periods of wet snow falling, mixed with rain, `a regular Scotch mist,' Worsley called it. There was little for them to do but lie in their tents, trying to sleep, playing cards - or simply thinking about how hungry they were.

  `A skua gull appeared,' wrote Macklin. `He settled down on our refuse pit - entrails of seals, etc. - and gorged himself to his heart's content - lucky gull.'

  James, in Shackleton's tent, `did some physics trying to recall some of my theory work,' but soon tired of it. The occupants of Wild's tent had to shift their sleeping bags because the heat from their bodies was melting the snow, robbing them of this last bit of comfort offered by a dry place to sleep. Even Hussey's banjo lost its appeal for some. McNeish complained: `Hussey is at present tormenting [us] with his six known tunes on his banjo.'

  Shackleton recorded on January 9: `I am growing anxious now with all this party.' And well he might have been. For almost a month, there had been no wind stronger than a breeze, and even this had been mostly from the north. And during the past week they had killed only two seals. They thus remained almost motionless, while their supply of meat dwindled alarmingly. Shackleton's contention that it would last a month proved grossly exaggerated. After only ten days at Mark Time Camp, the strain was beginning to tell. Greenstreet wrote: `The monotony of life here is getting on our nerves. Nothing to do, nowhere to walk, no change in surroundings, food or anything. God send us open water soon or we shall go balmy.'

  Then on January 13, a rumor spread that Shackleton was considering killing the dogs to ease the drain on the food supplies. Among the men, reactions ranged from simple resignation to outraged shock. Stormy debates on the value of the dogs against the food they consumed broke out in each tent that night. But the fundamental, underlying factor in these discussions was that, for many men, the dogs were more than so many pounds of pulling power on the trail; there was a deep emotional attachment involved. It was the basic human need to love something, the desire to express tenderness in this barren place. Though the dogs were vicious, surly beasts with one another, their devotion and loyalty toward the men was above question. And the men responded with an affection greatly surpassing anything they would have felt under ordinary circumstances.

  At the thought of losing Grus, a puppy born a year before on the Endurance, Macklin reflected: `He is a fine little dog, hard-working and of a good disposition. Also I have had him, fed him and trained him since he was born. I remember taking him out when he was a puppy in my pocket, only his nose peeping out and getting covered with frost. I used to take him on the sledge when I was driving the team, and in those early days he used to take an active interest in the doings of the dogs.'

  Under the best circumstances it would have been upsetting news. Under their present circumstances it was amplified in the minds of some men almost to a catastrophe. In their bitterness, a few, like Greenstreet, were inclined to fix the blame on Shackleton - with some justification: `... the present shortage of food,' Greenstreet wrote, `is due simply and solely from the Boss refusing to get seals when they were to be had and even refusing to let Orde-Lees to go out to look for them ... His sublime optimism all the way thro being to my mind absolute foolishness. Everything right away thro was going to turn out all right and no notice was taken of things possibly turning out otherwise and here we are.'

  Shackleton made no mention of killing the dogs the next morning. Instead he ordered the men to shift camp because their floe was melting at a dangerous rate. The soot from the blubber stove had been tracked all over the surface of the ice, and it was holding the heat of the sun.The men began at noon to construct a roadway of blocks of ice and snow to bridge the gap to a floe about 150 yards to the southeast. The move was completed early in the afternoon. They named their new location `Patience Canip.'

  Then, in a quiet, level voice, Shackleton ordered Wild to shoot his own team along with Mcllroy's, Marston's, and Crean's.

  There was no protest, no argument. The four drivers obediently harnessed their teams and drove the dogs about a quarter of a mile away from the camp. The drivers then returned alone, except for Mcllroy; he and Macklin were to assist Wild.

  Each dog in turn was taken off his trace and led behind a row of large ice hummocks. There Wild sat the animal in the snow, took the muzzle in his left hand, and placed his revolver close to its head. Death was instantaneous.

  After each dog had been killed Macklin and Mcllroy dragged its body a short distance away, then returned to the waiting teams for the next animal. None of the dogs seemed to sense what was happening, and each went unsuspectingly around the ice hummock to his death with his tail wagging. When the job was done, the three men piled snow on top of the heap of dog bodies and walked slowly back to camp.

  Shackleton decided to spare Greenstreet's team of year-old puppies `for the present,' and he also granted a one-day reprieve to Hurley's and Macklin's teams so that they might be used to make a trip back to Ocean Camp for some of the food that had been left there.

  The two sledges were made ready, and Hurley and Macklin started off at six-thirty that evening. It was an exhausting journey, lasting almost ten hours because they had to travel mostly over deep, soft snow and broken ice, and the dogs sank down to their bellies.

  As Macklin wrote later: `The going was so bad that they could not pull my weight, and I had to get off and flounder along beside the sledges. The dogs too kept falling back, and as soon as one dog collapsed or let his weight come on to the trace the whole line stopped. On these occasions they all lay down, and only violent abuse and vigorous treatment had any effect in raising them. Several pressure ridges had to be broken with pick and shovel. Finally with all the dogs dead beat we crawled into Ocean Camp about 4 a.m.'

  They found the place almost under water-To get into the galley where the stores were they had to lay down a bridge of planks. However, they managed to collect two loads of about Soo pounds apiece, consisting of canned vegetables, tapioca, dog pemmican, and jam. They prepared themselves a good meal of canned stew, fed the dogs, and started back at 6:3o a.m.

  The return journey was comparatively easy because they had their own tracks to follow. The dogs pulled magnificently, though old Bos'n, Macklin's leader, was so exhausted he repeatedly vomited and staggered badly. The two sledges reached Patience Camp at one in the afternoon, and the dogs `dropped in the snow,' Macklin recorded, `some of them not even rousing themselves to take their food.'

  Lying in his sleeping bag that night, Macklin wearily recorded the events of the journey in his diary. In a tired hand he concluded the entry: `My dogs will be shot tomorrow.'

  Chapter Two

  Two tents away, old Chippy McNeish was also writing his diary. It had been a discouraging day of muggy, dead-calm weather and the carpenter was tired. Since early morning he had been busy coating the seams of the boats with seal blood to keep the calking in once they were in the water. `No wind of any kind,' he wrote. `We are still in hope of a SW breeze to relieve us before the winter sets in.'

  Th
e next morning, three seals were sighted, and Macklin was sent out with Toni Crean to fetch them. When they returned, Shackleton told Macklin that since the party now had a fair supply of meat, his dogs would not be killed quite yet. Hurley's team, though, including the leader, Shakespeare, the biggest of all the dogs, was shot. Wild, as usual, was executioner, and he took the dogs over to a distant floe to kill them. Macklin later found one of the dogs still alive, and immediately took out his knife and stabbed the animal to death.

  About 3 p.m., the wind gently eased around to the southwest, and a chill came into the air. Throughout the night the temperature crept downward, and all the next day the southwest breeze held steady. That night Shackleton wrote, almost timorously, `This may be the turn in our fortune.' By now the wind was not taken lightly. `It is spoken of with reverence,' Hurley observed, `and wood must be touched when commenting thereon.'

  Somebody, it appeared, had touched the proper piece of wood. The wind came on the next day, a whole gale out of the southwest, with driving snow filling the air and the tents quaking with its violence. They huddled in their sleeping bags, dismally uncomfortable but radiantly happy. `Fifty miles an hour,' McNeish recorded blissfully, `but it is welcome & as much more - as long as the tents stand.' It howled on into January 19 unabated. Shackleton, the man of unbridled optimism, confined himself to guarded phrases lest he somehow hex this glorious wind. `We ought to be making North some now,' he said with the utmost restraint.

  Leonard Hussey and Samson

  On the twentieth, as the gale continued, a very few of them began to tire of the wet from the wind-driven snow filtering into the tents. `We are never satisfied,' Hurley wrote, `as we are looking forward to a fine day. Our gear in the tents is becoming very wet and the opportunity of drying same will be hailed.'

  But most of them cheerfully endured the dreadful conditions, happy in the knowledge that they must be making good progress to the north.

  `One hardly likes to guess what our distance may be,' Shackleton wrote, more boldly, `but tonight is the fourth of this blow and there are no signs of it abating so we ought to have made a good distance to the North. Lees Worsley are the only pessimistic ones in the camp but this strong wind even made Lees suggest larger steaks on the strength of our distance.'

  Washing day' at Patience Camp

  The next day the gale roared on, with a few gusts to 70 miles an hour. But twice during the morning the sun broke through the clouds. Worsley was ready with his sextant, and James stood by with his theodolite to catch the angle of the sun. They took their sights, worked out the calculations, and announced the result.

  `Wonderful, amazing splendid,' Shackleton wrote. `Lat. 65°43' South - 73 miles North drift. The most cheerful good fortune for a year for us: We cannot be much more than 17o miles from Paulet. Everyone greeted the news with cheers. The wind still continues. We may get another i o miles out of it. Thank God. Drifting still all wet in the tents but no matter. Had Bannock to celebrate North of the circle.' The Antarctic Circle now lay nearly a full degree of latitude behind them.

  The gale eased down the following day, and the sun shone brightly. All hands emerged from their tents, glad to be alive. They took oars from the boats and drove them into the ice, rigged lines between them, and hung up sleeping bags, blankets, boots, and floor cloths. `One would have thought it our washing day,' McNeish reported cheerfully.

  Later in the day, Worsley got another sight which put their position at 65°32%' South, 52°4' West - i i miles north in twenty-four hours. It brought the total run since the beginning of the gale to 84 miles - in six days. Furthermore, the drift to the east, away from land, amounted to only a paltry 15 miles.

  By evening the gale had blown itself out and the wind shifted to the north. But nobody minded. A northerly wind was just what they needed to open up the pack so that they could take to the boats. The wind continued into the next day without loosening the pack perceptibly. They waited.

  The following day Worsley climbed to the top of a 6o-foot berg a short distance to the southeast. He returned with the news that the floe on which Ocean Camp had stood had apparently been blown closer during the gale and was now only about 5 miles away. Through the glasses, he had seen the old wheelhouse storeroom and the third boat, the Staiicoi>>h Wills. What about open water? Worsley shook his head. None, he said, except a small patch far to the south.

  Still the opening would come - it was bound to. A heavy mist rolled in on January 25, and to McNeish it was a `proper sea fog,' indicating the presence of the ice-free ocean nearby. Shackleton, too, thought it must be a sea fog. But the opening still did not come, and the Boss felt his patience growing thin. On the twenty-sixth, after a day of unrelieved monotony, he took his diary and wrote across the space provided for that day:

  `Waiting Waiting Waiting.'

  But by the time a week had passed, most of the men were abandoning their hopes. They could see almost no change in the pack. If anything it was tighter than before, packed together by the force of the winds, perhaps driven against some unknown land to the north or northwest. The sense of immediacy gradually diminished, and the atmosphere in camp settled once more into reluctant resignation.

  Fortunately, the men were kept fairly well occupied. At their new position, game was abundant, and all hands were busy hunting seals and sledging them into camp. By January 30, eight days after the gale ended, they had laid in a stock of eleven seals. Shackleton decided to send Macklin's and Greenstreet's teams on another trip to Ocean Camp. Since Greenstreet, who had been suffering an attack of rheumatism for about two weeks, could not make the trip, his team was assigned to Crean. The two men were instructed to bring back anything of value they could find.

  This time sledging conditions were considerably better and the trip took less than ten hours. The teams returned with some odds and ends of stores, including a quantity of canned herring, 6o pounds of boullion cubes, and a large amount of tobacco. They also obtained a good number of books, among them several volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britaninica, which were especially welcome. Even McNeish, a devout Presbyterian, allowed as how he would enjoy a change from his Bible, which he had repeatedly reread from cover to cover.

  For the next two days, Shackleton carefully observed the movements of the pack, and then he decided that a party of eighteen under Wild should start out early the next morning to bring up the Staiicoiiib Wills. The news came as a great relief. For some time many of the amen, particularly the seamen, had had strong misgivings about the advisability of trying to crowd the entire party into two boats.

  `I am very glad,' Worsley wrote. `If it comes to boats we shall be far safer in three; with only two it would be a practical impossibility to bring 28 men alive through a boat voyage of any length.'

  The sledging party was awakened at i a.m. the next morning, and after a good heavy breakfast they started off, dragging an empty boat sledge with them. It was an easy journey with so many men, and they arrived two hours and ten minutes later. Wild appointed Hurley cook, with James as his `mate and general hoosh stirrer: They put together a meal of anything they could find, and it wound up a mixture of dog pemmican, baked beans, and canned cauliflower and beets, cooked together in an empty gasoline can. Macklin pronounced it `very good,' and James remarked with satisfaction that it was a `great success.'

  The party started back for Patience Camp at 6:3o a.m., and while the going was considerably heavier, they made good progress. They were within a mile of their goal by noon. Shackleton and Hussey went out to meet them with a pot of hot tea - `the most welcome tea I ever had,' James reported. The Stancovnb Wills was safe in camp by one o'clock.

  Shackleton immediately asked Macklin if he felt too tired to go back again to Ocean Canlp, this time with his team, to bring up a further load of supplies. Macklin agreed, and set off at 3 p.m., with Worsley and Crean, who had taken over the puppy team. Less than 2 miles from Ocean Canlp, they were stopped by large leads of open water. Worsley tried desperately to talk the sledge
men into pressing on. He ran up and down along the edges of the floes, pointing out possible ways to get across which were really `quite impossible,' Macklin said. `I was sorry for him, but it would have been foolish to have continued under the circumstances'

  Worsley wrote in his diary that night how disappointed he was that they had been forced to turn back, but added: `I was very pleased that the Pack had kept solid long enough to bring our third boat across.'

  He also noted: `I think many of our stomachs are rebelling against the excessive meat diet. I expect we will soon get used to it, but I think it would be better for us if we cooked some blubber with it. A good many of us suffer from, to put it mildly, flatulence, & what might almost be described as squeaky gut.' Actually it was not a humorous matter. As a result of their short rations, almost all of the men were constipated, which complicated what was already a very disagreeable chore. The usual procedure, whenever a man felt the need, was to go off behind a nearby pressure ridge - more for protection against the weather than for privacy - and get the job done as quickly as possible. Since one of the items they had been forced to do without since abandoning the Endurance was toilet paper, they had to substitute the only disposable material at hand - ice.Thus, almost all of them were badly chafed, and unfortunately treatment was impossible since all the ointments and most of the medicines were now at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

  In cold weather they were also greatly troubled with their eyes watering. The tears ran down a man's nose and formed an icicle on the end, which sooner or later had to be broken off. And no matter how carefully it was done, a little patch of skin invariably came off with it, leaving a chronically unhealed sore on the end of his nose.