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

by Alfred Lansing

  Most of the men felt the shortage of food almost as physical pain. The compulsive craving of their bodies for more fuel to burn to ward off the cold caused a gnawing, ceaseless hunger. And the weather was becoming increasingly bitter, with nighttime temperatures frequently dropping as low as i o below. Thus, when their need for calories was greatest, they were forced to get along on less than ever. Many men found that a few hours after eating they had to crawl into their sleeping bags to keep from shivering until the next meal put some warmth back into them.

  There were some intrepid attempts to make jokes about cannibalism. `Greenstreet and I,' wrote Worsley, `amuse ourselves at Marston's expense. Marston is the plumpest man in the Canip and we become very solicitous about his welfare and condition, making a great show of generosity by offering him old penguin bones that we have gnawed till there is nothing left. We implore him not to get thin and even go so far as to select chops, etc., off him and quarrel about who shall have the tenderest part. Finally he gets so disgusted with us that whenever he sees us approaching he turns and walks away.'

  It was a poor attempt at humor, because there was an element of pertinence in the subject matter. And Worsley himself, apart from these painful efforts to be funny, had grown silent and morose.

  By March 22, the food situation was so critical that Shackleton told Macklin that his dog team would have to be shot the next day so that the party might eat the food set aside for the dogs. Macklin reacted indifferently: `I must confess that I cannot see that they will be of much more use to us. Ocean Camp has apparently disappeared. We have now only i o more days' blubber fuel - it is to be hoped that we can get more seals, or we shall be in a bad way indeed.'

  The morning of March 23 dawned cold, with a patchy fog lying across the pack. Shackleton was up early to take a constitutional. He walked to the edge of the floe, and when the fog cleared for a moment he saw a black object far in the distance to the southwest. He watched it for a few minutes, then hurried back to his tent and roused Hurley. The two men returned to the edge of the floe and peered for several minutes through the intermittent bands of fog.

  It was there, all right - and it was land.

  Shackleton immediately ran back to camp, going from tent to tent shouting, `Land in sight! Land in sight!' The reaction was strange. Some men bounded out of their tents to see for themselves, but others - cold and discouraged and tired of mistaking distant bergs for land - refused to stir from their sleeping bags, at least until the sighting had been confirmed.

  But this was not a distant berg or a mirage. It was one of the tiny Danger Islets, identifiable, according to the British Antarctic Sailing Directions, by its tabletop bluffs rising steeply out of the water. It lay exactly 42 miles away; only 20 miles beyond it lay what had been their destination, Paulet Island.

  The men stood looking at the land for a short time, until the thickening fog cut off their view. Early in the afternoon, however, the weather cleared beautifully, revealing in the distance beyond the Danger Islets the black base of a range of mountains, their peaks hidden in low-lying clouds. Worsley identified the tallest of the peaks as Mount Percy on Joinville Island off the very tip of the Palmer Peninsula.

  The island lay just 57 miles nearly due west of them - almost exactly at right angles to the direction of their drift. `If the ice opens we could land in a day,' wrote Hurley.

  But there wasn't a man among them who believed that the pack would open. Quite the contrary. There were fully seventy bergs in sight, many of them aground, and they seemed for the moment to be preventing the pack from either opening or drifting much to the north. If the boats had been launched, they would probably have been crushed within minutes. Furthermore, sledging across the ice was unthinkable. The pack was now a dense mass of broken bits of floes a thousand times more treacherous than three months before when they had struggled for five days and covered 9 miles from Ocean Camp.

  Consequently, the sight of land was but another reminder of their helplessness. Greenstreet's attitude was rather typically cynical: `It is nice to think there is something else besides snow and ice in the world, but I fail to see any cause for excitement as it puts us no nearer getting out. What I would far rather see would be a crowd of seals coming up so that we might get food and fuel.'

  Yet frustrating as it was, the sight of land was welcome, as James noted, if for no other reason than `it is nearly i 6 months since we last saw any black rock.' Macklin especially benefited since, in the excitement, Shackleton apparently forgot his decision to have Macklin's team killed.

  `Please God,' wrote Shackleton that night, `we will soon get ashore.' But there was precious little land left on which to get ashore. They had drifted to the absolute tip of the Palmer Peninsula, and reaching land there now seemed all but impossible.

  Thus, between them and the open seas and Cape Horn rollers of the dreaded Drake Passage - the most storm-torn ocean on the globe - all that remained were two lonely, sentinel-like outposts of the Antarctic Continent - Clarence and Elephant Islands, about 120 miles to the north. Beyond these, there was nothing.

  March 24 was a bright, sunshiny day, and the peaks ofJoinville Island were clearly visible. James, looking across the dense, impassable pack, could not help but remark: `It is quite maddening to think that one little rift 20 feet wide or so would lead us out in a couple of days & all the time everything keeps as close as ever making a move of any sort an impossibility. We are all very silent and absorbed in the tent & don't get much conversation. There is an air of expectancy about, which causes much preoccupation.'

  The air of expectancy was heightened late in the day when two cracks developed in their floe, only about 9o feet from the boats. Fortunately they did not open.

  Just after dawn the following morning, a sudden violent gale sprang up from the southwest. But it lasted only until mid afternoon, and then the wind died off quickly and the weather cleared. The sunset was stormy looking, with fiery shreds of clouds passing across the face of the sun. Joinville Island once more came into view astern, though it was distant and indistinct.

  The biting cold brought by the southerly gale continued into the night, and they all suffered bitterly. Their bodies seemed to lack even enough heat to warm their sleeping bags.

  Less than a week's supply of blubber remained, so on March 26 the jounce ration of seal steaks at breakfast was cut out. In its place the men were usually given a half-pound cake of cold dog pemmican and a half-ration of powdered milk; on very cold days, a few lumps of sugar were added. Lunch was one biscuit and three lumps of sugar, and supper, the only so-called hot meal of the day, consisted of seal or penguin hoosh, `cooked for the minimum possible time.' No water was issued at any time. If a man wanted a drink, he packed snow into a small can, usually a tobacco tin, and held it against his body to melt, or slept with it in his sleeping bag. But a full tobacco tin of snow yielded only a tablespoonful or two of water.

  Word reached Shackleton on the twenty-sixth that several men had taken bits of blubber and penguin meat from the general store and were trying to eat it - frozen and raw. Shackleton immediately ordered that their remaining supply of stores be placed directly outside his tent.

  In addition, Macklin was told to pick out anything fit for human consumption from the stock of waste meat used to feed the dogs. Macklin sorted it out, setting aside everything `except that which was too stinking to contemplate eating.' It was a repulsive collection of odd bits of flesh, Macklin noted, `and unfortunately, if we do not get more seals we will have to eat it raw.

  It appeared, too, that the dogs would have to be eaten soon. They had been spared thus far because there was still a bare chance of making one last trip to Ocean Camp for the stores there. After that was done, or if it became evident that it could not be done, the dogs were to be shot and eaten.

  `I would have no hesitation in eating dog cooked,' wrote Macklin, `but I do not look forward to eating it raw.'

  For days, several men had strongly urged Shackleton to risk
this one desperate dash back to Ocean Camp, now barely visible about 7 miles away. A boo- or 700-pound store of dog pemmican and about 6o pounds of flour still remained there. But Shackleton, though he was gravely concerned about the state of their supplies, could not bring himself to send the dog drivers across ice which was so obviously treacherous. Almost continually there were sounds of pressure, apparently caused by the ice being jammed against the curving arm of the Palmer Peninsula. The noise echoed through the ice and movement could be seen in almost every direction. `I hope our old packet isn't going to break up,' Greenstreet commented, `as there isn't another decent floe anywhere to be seen.'

  The numerous bergs in the vicinity were also hastening the general disintegration of the ice. With their deep draft, the bergs seemed to be affected by erratic tidal currents. Periodically, one would cease to travel peacefully along with the rest of the pack and would suddenly veer off on its own, grinding through the ice and effortlessly shouldering aside anything in its path, leaving a wake of broken and upended floes. And there was no predicting what course these drunken juggernauts would take.

  Hurley and Shackleton in front of their tent in Patience Camp. Hurley is skinning a penguin.

  On March 27, Worsley noted that one huge berg unaccountably drew away to the northeast, `and a berg from the north came charging down towards our floe S miles in 4 hours but luckily passed just clear to the east.'

  The trip to Ocean Camp seemed to be growing less feasible by the hour, and Shackleton knew that it was now or never. Reluctantly he told Macklin that night to be ready for a possible start early the next morning. Macklin had already turned in, but he was so delighted at the news that he got up and worked for some time readying the harness and getting his sledge into shape. But at dawn the ice was very much on the move and a heavy mist had rolled in. Shackleton came to No. S tent just at breakfast time to inform Macklin that he had decided against the trip. It was a crushing disappointwent, coming as it did on the heels of a miserable night of wet, misty weather, during which nobody had slept much.

  Shackleton had hardly left when Macklin turned on Clark for some feeble reason, and the two men were almost immediately shouting at one another. The tension spread to Orde-Lees and Worsley and triggered a blasphemous exchange between them. In the midst of it, Greenstreet upset his powdered milk. He whirled on Clark, cursing him for causing the accident because Clark had called his attention for a moment. Clark tried to protest, but Greenstreet shouted him down.

  Then Greenstreet paused to get his breath, and in that instant his anger was spent and he suddenly fell silent. Everyone else in the tent became quiet, too, and looked at Greenstreet, shaggy-haired, bearded, and filthy with blubber soot, holding his empty mug in his hand and looking helplessly down into the snow that had thirstily soaked up his precious milk. The loss was so tragic he seemed almost on the point of weeping.

  Without speaking, Clark reached out and poured some of his milk into Greenstreet's mug. Then Worsley, then Macklin, and Rickinson and Kerr, Orde-Lees, and finally Blackboro. They finished in silence.

  Just after breakfast, two seals were sighted and hunting parties were urgently organized. The first group secured the closer of the two, and the others were within a short distance of their quarry when Shackleton, feeling that the ice was too dangerous, summoned them back to camp.

  On the way back, Orde-Lees collapsed from hunger. As usual, he had eaten only half his breakfast ration - an eighth of a pound of cold dog pemmican and a lump and a half of sugar - intending to save the rest for later. After several minutes' rest, however, he was able to regain his feet and make his way back to camp.

  Later in the day, the misty weather turned into pure rain, with the temperature rising to 33 degrees. Most of the men crawled into their sleeping bags and stayed there while the rain continued - that night and all the next day. Macklin described it: `A stream of water collected and, running under my bag, soaked it completely through, the bottom being absolutely sodden, and mitts, socks and other gear got thoroughly soaked too ... Even as I sit and write this the water is drip-drip-dripping from the tent roof and every available receptacle - empty tins, etc., - are in use to prevent our bags getting wetter. We are only partially successful, for the drips are coming in through four times as many places as we have receptacles for. I have spread my Burberrys over my bag, and when a pool has collected in them big enough I carefully lift and pour it into the snow at one side. It is pretty tedious having thus to keep a constant vigilance .... I pray God to send us dry weather soon, for this is misery. I have never seen such depression of spirits as there is in the tent today.'

  Later in the afternoon, the rain changed to snow, and by five o'clock it had ceased altogether. James was night watchman that evening from nine to ten, and as lie was walking around the floe, he thought he detected a movement in the ice. Looking closely, he saw a `very distinct swell' slowly lifting the floe. He reported his discovery to Shackleton who gave orders that the watchman should be especially alert.

  At five-twenty the next morning the floe split.

  Chapter Five

  Little Alf Cheetham was on watch, and he dashed among the tents.

  `Crack!' he shouted. `Crack! Lash up and stow!'

  Within seconds, all hands had tumbled out of their tents. They saw two cracks, one running the length of the floe and another extending at right angles to the first. In addition, the whole pack was rising to a very marked swell.

  They ran to the Jaincs Caird and wrenched the frozen runners of her sledge free of the ice, then manhandled her to the center of the floe. By then the crack down the center had widened out to 20 feet in some places, and could be seen slowly working back and forth under the influence of the swell. Their store of meat was on the other side. Several men jumped across where the crack was not so wide and pitched the meat over the seam of open water.

  By 6:45, everything was safely across and work was halted for breakfast. The men were standing around waiting for their ration when the floe cracked again, this time directly under the James Caird, i oo feet from the tents. No order was needed.The men dashed to the boat and quickly brought her up closer to the tent area. Finally, they were able to eat breakfast - the usual lump of dog pemmican, six pieces of sugar, and a half-mug of milk.

  Breakfast was hardly finished when, through the mists, a strange shape appeared, moving deliberately across a nearby section of their old floe. Wild ran to get his rifle from his tent, then he dropped to one knee and shot. The animal bucked, and slowly sank down onto the ice. Several men hurried to where it lay - a sea leopard nearly i i feet long.

  With one bullet, it seemed, Wild had changed the whole complexion of their lives. There at their feet lay nearly I,ooo pounds of meat - and at least two weeks' supply of blubber. Shackleton announced that they would feast on the sea leopard's liver for lunch.

  In high good spirits, the party sent out the dogs to return the trophy to camp. When it was butchered, they found in its stomach nearly fifty undigested fish, which were carefully set aside to be eaten the next day. It was nine o'clock by the time the job was finished.

  Shackleton then summoned Macklin and told him the time had come to shoot his dogs. Macklin made no protest, for there was really no longer any reason to spare them. The possibility of reaching Ocean Camp was more remote than ever in view of the new breakup, and now that they had the sea leopard, the need for risking such a trip was past.

  Accompanied by Wild, Macklin drove his team across the narrow neck of a crack to where the galley formerly had stood. On the way, they passed what had been the meat dump. Songster, a wily old dog, grabbed up a discarded penguin head, and Bos'n got hold of a bone.They were both allowed to keep them.

  Macklin was almost sick as he unharnessed one dog at a time and took it around the protective mound of ice. Wild, as before, sat each dog down in the snow, placed the muzzle of the revolver almost against its head, and pulled the trigger. Songster died with the penguin head in his mouth, and Bos'n died
gripping his bone. When all the dogs had been killed, Macklin skinned and gutted the carcasses, preparing them for eating. Crean's team of puppies was also killed and butchered.

  Back at camp, there was almost a holiday atmosphere in anticipation of the first hot lunch in more than two weeks. The suggestion was made that they sample the dog meat, and Shackleton agreed. Crean cut small steaks from his dog, Nelson, and Macklin did the same with Grus.

  When the meat had been fried, Crean hurried around to distribute it. He went first to Shackleton's tent, poking his weathered, Irish face through the flap. `I've just brought a bit of Nelson for you to try,' he said puckishly.

  The meat of the dogs was universally acclaimed. `Their flesh tastes a treat,' McNeish remarked. `It is a big treat to us after being so long on seal meat.' James found it `surprisingly good and tasty.' Worsley said that the piece of Grus he ate `has a better flavor than the sea leopard.' And Hurley went so far as to say it was `exquisitely tender and flavorous, especially Nelson, which equalled veal.'

  Throughout the morning the swell had continued and even increased slightly, so at lunch Shackleton announced that they would immediately go on a `watch and watch' system, four hours on and four hours off. Shackleton would take charge of one watch, and Wild the other. Thus half the party would be on duty at all times, fully dressed, with their gear lashed and ready to move at a moment's notice. Two of the men on watch would be required to walk the floe continuously, looking for cracks or any other threatened emergency. The others would be permitted to stand by in their tents.