The White South

by Hammond Innes

  “But the gap,” I cried. “He does not know there is a channel of water a quarter of a mile wide only a few miles to the east of us.”

  “You tell us that also—many times.” Kyrre’s hand pressed me back. “You must rest, for soon we must start. We have sledges piled with whale-meat and soon we must start.”

  I thought of the long trek back over that frightful road to the iceberg. I knew I couldn’t make it. “Give us one man as guide and some food. We will go on to the Southern Cross camp. We shall only hinder you.”

  But he shook his head. “You did not hear what Eide tell you last night. The Southern Cross camp is abandoned. You see, though we have an enormous quantity of meat and blubber, we have no boats. They were destroyed. So we go where the boats are. Each day we make a journey with half the sledges and then return for the other half. When we are too weak for this we make a dump of half the sledges and go on with the others.”

  “How many men have you?” I asked as I lay back.

  “Forty-six, including those who have gone forward with Kaptein Eide.”

  “The boats will not hold them,” I said. And added, “Even supposing we ever find open water to launch them in.”

  “That is so. But we are agreed that everyone must be together. While the ice holds we shall continue to make journeys until all the meat is with the boats. So we may perhaps survive the winter, if we must. Sometime the iceberg must drift out of the pack. Then the fittest will try to reach South Georgia, as Shackleton did, and bring relief. It is our only hope.”

  “Is Colonel Bland with him?” I asked.

  But he shook his head. “Colonel Bland is dead. It was his heart. He died soon after Dahle reach us.”

  “Dahle?” I stared at him. “Do you mean the mate of Hval 5?”

  He nodded. “He is gone on with Eide now to the iceberg. He and two other men reach us early last month.”

  “But—how?”

  “It seems they were swept away from you in the ice. They are on a floe-berg. When it is quiet they find the Tauer III Camp. Then—”

  “You mean the Tauer III Camp was still there?” I interrupted him.

  He nodded.

  So Erik Bland had been right. The icebergs would have missed him there. If he’d stayed he’d have had a chance of getting out alone. “Go on,” I said.

  “There is not much to tell. They get food and shelter there and survive the storm. Then, when the weather clear, they see the oil smoke with which we try to signal to aircraft and they join us. They are five days without food and the journey is terrible, I think. But they are all right.”

  “What about you? What happened after the Southern Cross went down?”

  “We lose our radio so we cannot talk with the rescue ships. Then we were caught by one of the icebergs, as you were. Only a few survive. Olaf Petersen and the others are dead. Then Dahle tell us how you are on a ledge on an iceberg with four boats, and Eide start out with volunteers to reach you. But they are caught in a blizzard and have to turn back. We were beginning a second attempt with all the men when we are lucky enough to find you.”

  I was beginning to feel tired again. Behind Kyrre I could just make out the grotesque, emaciated features of Weiner. As I went off to sleep again I remember thinking: He’s just like all D.P.’s. Tou can’t kill them. They’re indestructible. It’s always someone else that saves them, always someone else that dies. And I thought how Gerda had gone and Peer Larvik and Olaf Petersen. The good ones, the fighters—they’re always the ones that are sacrificed. I thought of Dunkirk and Salerno and Anzio and the ships that had gone down in convoys I’d escorted. It was always the fighters.

  Next morning, after an early meal, all the tents but the one in which Vaksdal, Keller and I lay were struck and Kyrre set out with his men and the first convoy of sledges loaded with whale-meat. One man was left behind to help us. We were to lie in for a bit and then come on in our own time. We should have nothing to carry and only a single journey to make to the new camp, whilst the rest made three journeys over the same ground.

  The trek east, back along the trail we had come, was painfully slow. For the first three days we just made the single journey from camp to camp. We carried nothing and could take our time, for Kyrre’s men, when they’d pitched the next camp, had to go back for the second lot of sledges. The open water where we’d been parted from the sea-leopard couldn’t have been very extensive. We made a slight detour to the south and saw no sign of it. For all I know the ice may have closed up again, or perhaps it had frozen over, for the air was very still and there would have been little movement of the water to break up new ice. On the fourth day Vaksdal and I were sufficiently recovered to pull our weight on the single journey. Keller was still weak. But next day he, too, was pulling the single journey, whilst we had progressed to the full three trips between camps. With an abundance of regular food my strength quickly returned, only the deadness in my feet and the pain in my side remained.

  Slowly the line of icebergs came up over the horizon. I began to dread their approach, for when we reached them I should have to tell Howe about Gerda’s death. And I didn’t want to do that. Eide would have broken it to him. But he would still want to hear how it happened from my own lips. The thought of that meeting weighed on my spirits like the depression one gets after flu. It was going to knock him for six. I remembered how embittered he’d been as he soaked up liquor like a sponge on the trip out from Capetown. And then the change that had come over him whilst he was with Gerda. What could I possibly say to him? I remembered that scene on the ledge when he’d renounced his right to accompany Gerda. He’d committed her to my charge. I was responsible for her—not only to him, but to myself. The fact that we were without hope, certain we were going to die, did not help now. Only one thing consoled me; that was that she died without knowing that her father had been killed. But that wouldn’t help me with Howe.

  I could see his features quite distinctly as I trudged through the ice, leaning my weight on the sledge ropes. I could see the bitter look coming back into his face. And when we got back—if we got back—he’d start drinking again. Drink was all that was left to him. It would kill him in the end, and somehow I didn’t want him to go like that.

  At last we could see the whole of our own iceberg. The sky was black behind it—a water-sky—and against that backcloth the berg stood out white like a giant pillar of salt. The pinnacle of ice on the top stood up free of cloud with all the sublime upthrust of hope that belongs to a church spire in a flat plain. With my inflamed eyes I looked through Kyrre’s glasses and saw the ledge on which our camp should be. Perhaps we were too far away, but my heart sank as I saw no sign of life, no dark smudge that could be the boats and stores.

  But at midday the following day—that is, on 9th April—we saw figures coming towards us across the snow. I thought: My God! It’s Eide coming back. They’re all dead. I wasn’t worrying about Howe then. I was thinking of Judie and there was an awful ache in my heart. Then the figures were waving to us and shouting. My stabbing eyeballs couldn’t recognise them. I dropped the sledge ropes and broke into a stumbling run towards them.

  There were about half a dozen of them and the first one I recognised was Eide. I was sure then that the others were dead. He caught hold of my arm, grinning and slapping me on the shoulder. Then he pulled one of the others forward and the next instant Judie was sobbing and laughing in my arms.

  And when I looked at her, she was no longer thin and emaciated. She looked well fed and fit, except for the tears that ran down her cheeks. “I thought you were dead,” she said through sobs of laughter. “Then Captain Eide came and told us you were all right. Oh, Duncan—I didn’t want to go on without you. I couldn’t have faced it without you.”

  I had my arms tight round her. She was trembling. The cold air seemed suddenly warmer and I no longer felt tired. “The others?” I asked. “Are they all right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, everyone’s fine. Except Walter.”
r />   “Except Walter?” I stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Two days after you left,” she said. “Only two days—and thousands of penguins appeared on the ice round the berg. Migrating, or something. We killed over two hundred in one day and more the next. We were rolling in food. We tried to make signals. But you didn’t see. Then Walter went after you. He went in the night without telling anyone. In the morning we could see him going out along the trail of your sledge. Eide says he didn’t find you?”

  “No,” I said. A great weight seemed to have been taken off my mind. Howe was dead. He was safe from the bitterness of life. He was dead and I didn’t have to tell him about Gerda.

  “There’s open sea within five miles of us.”

  I was thinking about Howe and I didn’t take that in until she repeated it. “We’re drifting north and the ice is breaking up. If there’s a gale the iceberg may break through the pack in a matter of days.”

  I turned to Eide. “Is this true?” I asked incredulously. “Is there a chance of the iceberg breaking out?”

  “Not only a chance,” Eide answered. “It’s a certainty. We’ll be able to launch the boats inside a week.”

  “And then?” I said, glancing round at the Southern Cross survivors.

  He caught the drift of my thoughts. “And then we split up. We have four boats. Four chances of getting help. The rest must camp on the iceberg. One of the boats will surely get through.”

  I turned and stared at the iceberg. It looked solid enough, but the open sea was different to the pack. It wasn’t going to be pleasant marooned on an island of ice swept by gales and the piled-up waves of the South Atlantic. And those tiny boats! Winter was closing in. There’d be gale after gale. This area was noted for them. An almost constant holocaust of wind. What chance had they? The thought made me shudder. I thought again of the trip I’d just made—the futility of it. We had gone in the wild hope of bringing back meat, and two days after we’d left they’d had meat in abundance. Gerda and Howe need never had died, and Eide would have joined up with us anyway. But we hadn’t known that. Just as now, we didn’t know whether or not a rescue boat would sight us on the iceberg if we stayed there. And because we didn’t know, we’d have to attempt the impossible and sail those flimsy lifeboats to South Georgia.

  I put my arm round Judie’s shoulders and pressed her to me. It was worth it for her sake. But—“I hope to God Fate doesn’t play us any more dirty tricks.”

  She looked up at me quickly and I realised I’d spoken aloud. Then she said, “You’re thinking of Gerda, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “She was a lovely person. But, you know, she wouldn’t have been happy without her father. Walter couldn’t fill his place in her life.” And then she looked up and smiled. “I think we are all right now. Everything is going to work out.”

  The sledges were moving forward again and we turned our faces towards the great castle of ice ahead of us—and the future. Behind the ice was the black cloud-scape that marked the open sea. And beyond was South Georgia. One of the men began to sing. It was a Norwegian song I’d heard them singing on board ship, something about going home. In an instant it was taken up by the rest of the men and the sledges slid forward to the swelling of men’s voices, breaking the eternal silence of the ice with their challenge of hope and longing. The sound was thin in the limitless plain of pack ice, but it was indomitable and it sent a thrill of pride and courage through me. Judie was singing, too—singing for me, with her grey eyes laughing and her young body flung forward, straining on the ropes. And her words echoed in my ears—I think we are all right now. Everything is going to work out.

  The Survivors

  ON THE 21ST April a radio message from South Georgia put the name of the Southern Cross back in the headlines of the world’s newspapers. It was from Jan Eriksen, manager of the whaling station at Grytviken, to the offices of his company in Oslo, and read: Two boats containing survivors of the Southern Cross arrived Grytviken.

  Two hours later a further message was received containing the first news that there were survivors marooned on an iceberg in the Antarctic. This read: Two boats each carried six survivors. Commanders: Hans Eide, Einar Vaksdal. List of crews to follow. Two further boats (Kyrre and Dahle) not yet arrived. Sixty-seven persons, including Mrs. Judie Bland, marooned on iceberg in open water, position 62.58 S. 30.46 W. Four catchers dispatched to search for missing boats. On arrival station relief ship, Pingvin, I will attempt to rescue survivors marooned on iceberg.

  Winter was closing in on the ice-capped island of South Georgia. In two days the whaling station would have been closed and the place deserted. Eide had made it with just two days to spare. It was an incredible story.

  The iceberg had broken out of the pack in a gale on 10th April. The ledge on which their camp was situated then faced straight into the wind. Swept by icy spray from the waves that thundered against the berg, they clung precariously to life for twenty-four hours. Then the berg swung round so that their ledge was sheltered from the wind. They had already decked-in the boats with pieces of packing cases and canvas. They now re-cut the ledge, and on the afternoon of the 11th when the gale had begun to subside they ran the boats down the ice slipway with the crews in them, letting them take the water like lifeboats being launched from a shore station.

  In the mountainous waves and the almost continual gloom, the four boats were soon swept apart and separated. For ten days they drove northwards towards South Georgia, their scraps of sail driving them pell-mell through the water on the crests of the waves and hanging slack for lack of wind in the troughs.

  Eide, in his radioed report of the boat journey, said: “I have never experienced such hardship during my thirty-two years at sea. There was a crew of six to each boat. There was no place to sleep. We were constantly bailing for our lives and chipping away the ice that coated the boat and threatened to sink her. Only once was I able to shoot the sun and check my navigation. It was so cold that men froze stiff as boards at the tiller and could not move their limbs until they had been well rubbed to restore the circulation. By the fifth day we were suffering badly from exposure and there were cases of frost-bite. The fear that I should make an error in navigation, miss South Georgia and drive on into the Atlantic was constantly with me.”

  They experienced one bad gale. And then late on the tenth day they sighted the south-eastern tip of South Georgia, and in the morning, as they sailed up the northern side of the island, they saw Vaksdal’s boat following about a mile behind them.

  These were, in fact, the only two boats to get through. What happened to the others we shall never know. Maybe they missed South Georgia and drove on into the Atlantic. Maybe they were swamped or the men became too weakened to chip the ice off and they just capsized. The catchers sent out from Grytviken to search for them reported nothing, not even wreckage.

  Meanwhile messages were pouring in to the Nord Hvalstasjon. The attention of the whole world had suddenly become focused on this lonely whaling outpost. Eide found himself with offers of assistance from a dozen different countries. But they were all useless. Within a few weeks the pack ice would have moved north with the winter and the iceberg would be beset again. There would be no hope of rescue then until next summer, and he knew that those on the iceberg could not survive the winter. His only hope was the Pingvin.

  This little vessel arrived at Grytviken on the 22nd and began refuelling at once. It left in the early hours of the 23rd with Eide and Eriksen on board. Before he left, Eide had radioed a full account of the disaster and the names of the survivors marooned on the iceberg. This was the first intimation we had that an Englishman, Duncan Craig, was in command of the survivors.

  There followed an anxious period of waiting. The catchers searching for the two missing boats were forced by heavy storms to return to Grytviken. No messages were received from the Pingvin. The ship was held up by loose pack and heavy seas, and though we didn’t know it at the time, Jacobsen,
the captain, insisted on turning back early on the 26th. Only the pleading of Eide and Eriksen persuaded him to risk his ship and his men a few more hours in those terrible seas.

  On the evening of that same day came the first piece of good news. A radio message from Grytviken reported: Pingvin has sighted iceberg. Pack ice heavy and weather conditions bad.

  After that—nothing. For over twenty-four hours Grytviken had nothing to report. Newspapers began running gloomy accounts of conditions in the Antarctic in late April, and as the hours of waiting passed and still there was no news, fears grew that the rescue attempt would fail.

  Then, just after midday on the 28th, the teleprinters began clacking out the news for which the public had been waiting.

  ICEBERG SURVIVORS RESCUED. OSLO APRIL 28 REUTER : MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM STATION RELIEF SHIP PINGVIN STATES ALL SURVIVORS OF SOUTHERN CROSS MAROONED ON ICEBERG NOW SAFE. PACK ICE AND HEAVY SEAS DELAYED RESCUE OPERATIONS. SURVIVORS SAY CONDITIONS VERY BAD ON ICEBERG IN OPEN WATER OWING TO HEAVY SEAS BREAKING OVER LEDGE CAMP AND FREEZING.

  REUTER 1317

  Well, that is the end of the story of the Southern Cross disaster. There is little more to add, except that now, just over a year after it all happened, a new Southern Cross is building at Belfast. It is to cost over £2,500,000 and is expected to be ready for next season. The South Antarctic Whaling Company still has its offices in Fenchurch Street. Only the list of directors has changed. Sir Frederick Sands, well-known financier, is the new chairman, and Duncan Craig is on the board.

  Judie Bland is now Judie Craig. They were married in Capetown on their way back from South Georgia, and according to Craig most of South Africa turned out for the wedding. Besides being a director of the company, Duncan Craig sails as master of Southern Cross II when the South Antarctic’s next expedition leaves in October. Eide, who was cleared of all blame for the disaster, is already in the Antarctic as master of another factory ship.