Our difficulties during the next four days were increased by the snow-blindness of half the men. The evening we reached the glacier Bowers wrote: "I am afraid I am going to pay dearly for not wearing goggles yesterday when piloting the ponies. My right eye has gone bung, and my left one is pretty dicky. If I am in for a dose of snow glare it will take three or four days to leave me, and I am afraid I am in the ditch this time. It is painful to look at this paper, and my eyes are fairly burning as if some one had thrown sand into them." And then: "I have missed my journal for four days, having been enduring the pains of hell with my eyes as well as doing the most back-breaking work I have ever come up against.... I was as blind as a bat, and so was Keohane in my team. Cherry pulled alongside me, with Crean and Keohane behind. By sticking plaster over my glasses except one small central spot I shut off most light and could see the points of my ski, but the glasses were always fogged with perspiration and my eyes kept on streaming water which cannot be wiped off on the march as a ski stick is held in each hand; and so heavy were our weights (we had now taken on the weights which had been on the dog sledges) that if any of the pair slacked a hand even, the sledge stopped. It was all we could do to keep the sledge moving for short spells of a few hundred yards, the whole concern sinking so deeply into the soft snow as to form a snow-plough. The starting was worse than pulling as it required from ten to fifteen desperate jerks on the harness to move the sledge at all." Many others were also snowblind, caused partly by the strain of the last march of the ponies, partly by not having realized that now that we were day-marching the sun was more powerful and more precautions should be taken. The cocaine and zinc sulphate tablets which we had were excellent, but we also found that our tea leaves, which had been boiled twice and would otherwise have been thrown away, relieved the pain if tied into some cotton and kept pressed against the eyes. The tannic acid in the tea acted as an astringent. A snowblind man can see practically nothing anyhow and so he is not much worse off if a handkerchief is tied over his eyes.
"Beardmore Glacier. Just a tiny note to be taken back by the dogs. Things are not so rosy as they might be, but we keep our spirits up and say the luck must turn. This is only to tell you that I find I can keep up with the rest as well as of old."[215]
Then for the first time we were left with our full loads of 800 lbs. a sledge. Even Bowers asked Scott whether he was going to try it without relaying. That night Scott's diary runs:
"It was a very anxious business when we started after lunch, about 4.30. Could we pull our full loads or not? My own party got away first, and, to my joy, I found we could make fairly good headway. Every now and again the sledge sank in a soft patch, which brought us up, but we learned to treat such occasions with patience. We got sideways to the sledge and hauled it out, Evans (P.O.) getting out of his ski to get better purchase. The great thing is to keep the sledge moving, and for an hour or more there were dozens of critical moments when it all but stopped, and not a few when it brought up altogether. The latter were very trying and tiring."[216] Altogether it was an encouraging day and we reckoned we had made seven miles. Generally it was not Scott's team which made the heaviest weather these days but on December 12 they were in greater difficulties than any of us. It was indeed a gruelling day, for the surface was worse than ever and many men were snow-blind. After five hours' work in the morning we were about half a mile forward. We were in a sea of pressure, the waves coming at us from our starboard bow, the distance between the crests not being very great. We could not have advanced at all had it not been for our ski: "on foot one sinks to the knees, and if pulling on a sledge to half way between knee and thigh."[217]
On December 13, "the sledges sank in over twelve inches, and all the gear, as well as the thwartship pieces, were acting as breaks. The tugs and heaves we enjoyed, and the number of times we had to get out of our ski to upright the sledge, were trifles compared with the strenuous exertion of every muscle and nerve to keep the wretched drag from stopping when once under weigh; and then it would stick, and all the starting operations had to be gone through afresh. We did perhaps half a mile in the forenoon. Anticipating a better surface in the afternoon we got a shock. Teddy (Evans) led off half an hour earlier to pilot a way, and Captain Scott tried some fake with his spare runners (he lashed them under the sledge to prevent the cross-pieces ploughing the snow) that involved about an hour's work. We had to continually turn our runners up to scrape the ice off them, for in these temperatures they are liable to get warm and melt the snow on them, and that freezes into knobs of ice which act like sandpaper or spikes on a pair of skates. We bust off second full of hope having done so well in the forenoon, but pride goeth (before a fall). We stuck ten yards from the camp, and nine hours later found us little more than half a mile on. I have never seen a sledge sink so. I have never pulled so hard, or so nearly crushed my inside into my backbone by the everlasting jerking with all my strength on the canvas band round my unfortunate tummy. We were all in the same boat however.
"I saw Teddy struggling ahead and Scott astern, but we were the worst off as the leading team had topped the rise and I was too blind to pick out a better trail. We fairly played ourselves out that time, and finally had to give it up and relay. Halving the load we went forward about a mile with it, and, leaving that lot, went back for the remainder. So done were my team that we could do little more than pull the half loads. Teddy's team did the same, and though Scott's did not, we camped practically the same time, having gone over our distance three times. Mount Kyffin was still ahead of us to the left: we seemed as if we can never come up with it. To-morrow Scott decided that if we could not move our full loads we would start relaying systematically. It was a most depressing outlook after such a day of strenuous labour."[218] We got soaked with perspiration these days, though generally pulling in vest, pants, and windproof trousers only. Directly we stopped we cooled quickly. Two skuas appeared at lunch, attracted probably by the pony flesh below, but it was a long way from the sea for them to come. On Thursday December 14, Scott wrote: "Indigestion and the soggy condition of my clothes kept me awake for some time last night, and the exceptional exercise gives bad attacks of cramp. Our lips are getting raw and blistered. The eyes of the party are improving, I am glad to say. We are just starting our march with no very hopeful outlook."
But we slogged along with much better results. "Once into the middle of the glacier we had been steering more or less for the Cloudmaker and by supper to-day were well past Mount Kyffin and were about 2000 feet up after an estimated run of 11 or 12 statute miles. But the most cheering sign was that the blue ice was gradually coming nearer the surface; at lunch it was two feet down, and at our supper camp only one foot. In pitching our tent Crean broke into a crevasse which ran about a foot in front of the door and there was another at Scott's door. We threw an empty oil can down and it echoed for a terribly long time."[219] We spent the morning of December 15 crossing a maze of crevasses though they were well bridged; I believe all these lower reaches of the glacier are badly crevassed, but the thick snow and our ski kept us from tumbling in. There was a great deal of competition between the teams which was perhaps unavoidable but probably a pity. This day Bowers' diary records, "Did a splendid bust off on ski, leaving Scott in the lurch, and eventually overhauling the party which had left some time before us. All the morning we kept up a steady, even swing which was quite a pleasure." But the same day Scott wrote, "Evans' is now decidedly the slowest unit, though Bowers' is not much faster. We keep up and overhaul either without difficulty." Bowers' team considered themselves quite good, but both teams were satisfied of their own superiority; as a matter of fact Scott's was the faster, as it should have been for it was certainly the heavier of the two.
"It was a very bad light all day, but after lunch it began to get worse, and by 5 o'clock it was snowing hard and we could see nothing. We went on for nearly an hour, steering by the wind and any glimpse of sastrugi, and then, very reluctantly, Scott camped. It looks better now. The
surface is much harder and more wind-swept, and as a rule the ice is only six inches underneath. We are beginning to talk about Christmas. We get very thirsty these days in the warm temperatures: we shall feel it farther up when the cold gets into our open pores and sunburnt hands and cracked lips. I am plastering some skin on mine to-night. Our routine now is: turn out 5.30, lunch 1, and camp at 7, and we get a short 8 hours' sleep, but we are so dead tired we could sleep half into the next day: we get about 9½ hours' march. Tea at lunch a positive godsend. We are raising the land to the south well, and are about 2500 feet up, latitude about 84° 8' S."[220]
The next day, December 16, Bowers wrote: "We have had a really enjoyable day's march, except the latter end of the afternoon. At the outset in the forenoon my sledge was a bit in the lurch, and Scott drew steadily away from us. I knew I could ordinarily hold my own with him, but for the first two hours we dropped till we were several hundred yards astern; try as I would to rally up my team we could gain nothing. On examining the runners however we soon discovered the cause by the presence of a thin film of ice. After that we ran easily. The thing one must avoid doing is to touch them with the hand or mitt, as anything damp will make ice on them. We usually turn the sledge on its side and scrape one runner at a time with the back of our knives so as to avoid any chance of cutting or chipping them. In the afternoon either the tea or the butter we had at lunch made us so strong that we fairly overran the other team."[221]
"We must push on all we can, for we are now 6 days behind Shackleton, all due to that wretched storm. So far, since we got among the disturbances we have not seen such alarming crevasses as I had expected; certainly dogs could have come up as far as this."[222]
"At lunch we could see big pressure ahead having done first over five miles. Soon after lunch, having gone down a bit, we rose among very rough stuff. We plugged on until 4.30, when ski became quite impossible, and we put them on the sledges and started on foot. We immediately began putting legs down: one step would be on blue ice and the next two feet down into snow: very hard going. The pressure ahead seemed to stretch right into a big glacier next the Keltie Glacier to the east, and so we altered course for a small bluff point about two-thirds of the way along the base of the Cloudmaker. We were to camp at 6, but did not do so until about 6.30, the last 1½ hours in big pressure, crossing big and smaller waves, and hundreds of crevasses which one of us generally found. We are now camped in very big pressure, and with difficulty we found a patch big enough to pitch the tent free from crevasses. We are pretty well past the Keltie Glacier which is a vast tumbled mass: there is a long line of ice falls ahead, and I think there is a hard day ahead of us to-morrow among that pressure which must be enormous. We can't go farther inshore here, being under the north end of the Cloudmaker, and a fine mountain it is, rising precipitously above us.[223]
"Sunday, December 17. Nearly 11 miles. Temp. 12.5°. 3500 feet. We have had an exciting day—this morning was just like the scenic railway at Earl's Court. We got straight on to the big pressure waves, and headed for the humpy rock at the base of the Cloudmaker. It was a hard plug up the waves, very often standing pulls, and all that we could do for a course was a very varied direction. Going down the other side was the exciting part: all we could do was to set the sledge straight, hang on to the straps, give her a little push and rush down the slope, which was sometimes so sheer that the sledge was in the air. Sometimes there was no chance to brake the sledge, and we all had to get on to the top, and we rushed down with the wind whistling in our ears. After three hours of this it levelled out again a bit, and we took the top of a wave, and ran south along it on blue ice: enormous pressure to our right, largely I think caused by the Keltie Glacier. Then we ascended a rise, snowy and crevassed, and camped after doing just under five miles, with big pressure ahead."[224]
"In the afternoon we had a hard surface. Scott started off at a great speed, Teddy [Evans] and I following. There was something wrong with my team or my sledge, as we had a desperate job to keep up at first. We did keep up all right, but were heartily glad when after about 2½ hours Scott stopped for a spell. I rearranged our harness, putting Cherry and myself on the long span again, which we had temporarily discarded in the morning. We were both winded and felt wronged. The rearrangement was a success however, and the remainder of the march was a pleasure instead of a desperate struggle. It finished up on fields of blue rippled ice with sharp knife edges, and snow patches few and far between. We are all camped on a small snow patch in the middle of a pale blue rippled sea, about 3600 feet above sea level and past the Cloudmaker, which means that we are half way up the Glacier."[225] We had done 12½ miles (statute).
The Beardmore Glacier is twice as large as the Malaspina in Alaska, which was the largest known glacier until Shackleton discovered the Beardmore. Those who knew the Ferrar Glacier professed to find the Beardmore unattractive, but to me at any rate it was grand. Its very vastness, however, tends to dwarf its surroundings, and great tributary glaciers and tumbled ice-falls, which anywhere else would have aroused admiration, were almost unnoticed in a stream which stretched in places forty miles from bank to bank. It was only when the theodolite was levelled that we realized how vast were the mountains which surrounded us: one of which we reckoned to be well over twenty thousand feet in height, and many of the others must have approached that measurement. Lieutenant Evans and Bowers were surveying whenever the opportunity offered, whilst Wilson sat on the sledge or on his sleeping-bag, and sketched.
Before leaving on the morning of December 18 we bagged off three half-weekly units and made a depôt marked by a red flag on a bamboo which was stuck into a small mound. Unfortunately it began to snow in the night and no bearings were taken until the following morning when only the base of the mountains on the west side was visible. We knew we might have difficulty in picking up this depôt again, and certainly we all did.
"It was thick, with low stratus clouds in the morning, and snow was falling in large crystals. Our socks and finnesko, hung out to dry, were covered with most beautiful feathery crystals. In the warm weather one gets fairly saturated with perspiration on the march, and foot-gear is always wet, except the outside covering which is as a rule more or less frozen according to existing temperature. On camping at night I shift to night foot-gear as soon as ever the tent is pitched, and generally slip on my windproof blouse, as one cools down like smoke after the exertion of man-hauling a heavy sledge for hours. At lunch camp one's feet often get pretty cold, but this goes off as soon as some hot tea is got into the system. As a rule, even when snowing, one's socks, etc., will dry if there is a bit of a breeze. They are always frozen stiff in the morning and can best be thawed out by bundling the lot (under one's) jersey during breakfast. They can then be put on tolerably warm even if wet.
"We started off on a hard rippled blue surface like a sea frozen intact while the wind was playing on it. It soon got worse and we had to have one and sometimes two hands back to keep the sledge from skidding. Of course it was easy enough stuff to pull on, but the ground was very uneven, and sledges constantly capsized. It did not improve the runners either. There were few crevasses.
"All day we went on in dull cloudy weather with hardly any land visible, and the glacier to be seen only for a short distance. In the afternoon the clouds lifted somewhat and showed us the Adam Mountains. The surface was better for the sledges but worse for us, as there were countless cracks and small crevasses, into which we constantly trod, barking our shins. As the afternoon sun came round the perspiration fairly streamed down, and it was impossible to keep goggles clear. The surface was so slippery and uneven that it was difficult to keep one's foothold. However we did 12½ miles, and felt that we had really done a good day's work when we camped. It was not clear enough to survey in the evening, so I took the sledge-meter in hand and worked at it half the night to repair Christopher's damage. I ended up by making a fixing of which I was very proud, but did not dare to look at the time, so I don't know how much sleep I misse
d.
"There is no doubt that Scott knows where to aim for in a glacier, as it was just here that Shackleton had two or three of his worst days' work, in such a maze of crevasses that he said that often a slip meant death for the whole party. He avoids the sides of the glacier and goes nowhere near the snow: he often heads straight for apparent chaos and somehow, when we appear to have reached a cul-de-sac, we find it an open road."[226] However, we all found the trouble on our way back.
"On our right we have now a pretty good view of the Adam, Marshall and Wild Mountains, and their very curious horizontal stratification. Wright has found, amongst bits of wind-blown débris, an undoubted bit of sandstone and a bit of black basalt. We must get to know more of the geology before leaving the glacier finally."[227]