To-day is Lashly's birthday; he is married and has a family; is 44 years of age, and due for his pension from the service. He is as strong as most and is an undefeated old sportsman. Being a chief stoker, R.N., his original job was charge of one of the ill-fated motor sledges.
The following is Lashly's own account:
"Christmas Day and a good one. We have done 15 miles over a very changing surface. First of all it was very much crevassed and pretty rotten; we were often in difficulties as to which way we should tackle it. I had the misfortune to drop clean through, but was stopped with a jerk when at the end of my harness. It was not of course a very nice sensation, especially on Christmas Day, and being my birthday as well. While spinning round in space like I was it took me a few seconds to gather together my thoughts and see what kind of a place I was in. It certainly was not a fairy's place. When I had collected myself I heard some one calling from above, 'Are you all right, Lashly?' I was all right it is true, but I did not care to be dangling in the air on a piece of rope, especially when I looked round and saw what kind of a place it was. It seemed about 50 feet deep and 8 feet wide, and 120 feet long. This information I had ample time to gain while dangling there. I could measure the width with my ski sticks, as I had them on my wrists. It seemed a long time before I saw the rope come down alongside me with a bowline in it for me to put my foot in and get dragged out. It was not a job I should care to have to go through often, as by being in the crevasse I had got cold and a bit frost-bitten on the hands and face, which made it more difficult for me to help myself. Anyhow Mr. Evans, Bowers and Crean hauled me out and Crean wished me many happy returns of the day, and of course I thanked him politely and the others laughed, but all were pleased I was not hurt bar a bit of a shake. It was funny although they called to the other team to stop they did not hear, but went trudging on and did not know until they looked round just in time to see me arrive on top again. They then waited for us to come up with them. The Captain asked if I was all right and could go on again, which I could honestly say 'Yes' to, and at night when we stopped for dinner I felt I could do two dinners in. Anyhow we had a pretty good tuck-in. Dinner consisted of pemmican, biscuits, chocolate éclair, pony meat, plum pudding and crystallized ginger and four caramels each. We none of us could hardly move."[237]]
We had done over eight miles at lunch. I had managed to scrape together from the Barrier rations enough extra food to allow us a stick of chocolate each for lunch, with two spoonfuls of raisins each in our tea. In the afternoon we got clear of crevasses pretty soon, but towards the end of the afternoon Captain Scott got fairly wound up and went on and on. The breeze died down and my breath kept fogging my glasses, and our windproofs got oppressively warm and altogether things were pretty rotten. At last he stopped and we found we had done 14¾ miles. He said, "What about fifteen miles for Christmas Day?" so we gladly went on—anything definite is better than indefinite trudging.
We had a great feed which I had kept hidden and out of the official weights since our departure from Winter Quarters. It consisted of a good fat hoosh with pony meat and ground biscuit; a chocolate hoosh made of water, cocoa, sugar, biscuit, raisins, and thickened with a spoonful of arrowroot. (This is the most satisfying stuff imaginable.) Then came 2½ square inches of plum-duff each, and a good mug of cocoa washed down the whole. In addition to this we had four caramels each and four squares of crystallized ginger. I positively could not eat all mine, and turned in feeling as if I had made a beast of myself. I wrote up my journal—in fact I should have liked somebody to put me to bed.
December 26. We have seen many new ranges of mountains extending to the S.E. of the Dominion Range. They are very distant, however, and must evidently be the top of those bounding the Barrier. They could only be seen from the tops of the ridges as waves up which we are continually mounting. Our height yesterday morning by hypsometer was 8000 feet. That is our last hypsometer record, as I had the misfortune to break the thermometer. The hypsometer was one of my chief delights, and nobody could have been more disgusted than myself at its breaking. However, we have the aneroid to check the height. We are going gradually up and up. As one would expect, a considerable amount of lassitude was felt over breakfast after our feed last night. The last thing on earth I wanted to do was to ship the harness round my poor tummy when we started. As usual a stiff breeze from the south and a temperature of -7° blew in our faces. Strange to say, however, we don't get frost-bitten. I suppose it is the open-air life.
I could not tell if I had a frost-bite on my face now, as it is all scales, so are my lips and nose. A considerable amount of red hair is endeavouring to cover up matters. We crossed several ridges, and after the effects of over-feeding had worn off did a pretty good march of thirteen miles.
(No more Christmas Days, so no more big hooshes.)[238]
December 27. There is something the matter with our sledge or our team, as we have an awful slog to keep up with the others. I asked Dr. Bill and he said their sledge ran very easily. Ours is nothing but a desperate drag with constant rallies to keep up. We certainly manage to do so, but I am sure we cannot keep this up for long. We are all pretty well done up to-night after doing 13.3 miles.
Our salvation is on the summits of the ridges, where hard névé and sastrugi obtain, and we skip over this slippery stuff and make up lost ground easily. In soft snow the other team draw steadily ahead, and it is fairly heart-breaking to know you are putting your life out hour after hour while they go along with little apparent effort.
December 28. The last few days have been absolutely cloudless, with unbroken sunshine for twenty-four hours. It sounds very nice, but the temperature never comes above zero and what Shackleton called "the pitiless increasing wind" of the great plateau continues to blow at all times from the south. It never ceases, and all night it whistles round the tents, all day it blows in our faces. Sometimes it is S.S.E., or S.E. to S., and sometimes even S. to W., but always southerly, chiefly accompanied by low drift which at night forms quite a deposit round the sledges. We expected this wind, so we must not growl at getting it. It will be great fun sailing the sledges back before it. As far as weather is concerned we have had remarkably fine days up here on this limitless snow plain. I should like to know what there is beneath us—mountains and valleys simply levelled off to the top with ice? We constantly come across disturbances which I can only imagine are caused by the peaks of ice-covered mountains, and no doubt some of the ice-falls and crevasses are accountable to the same source. Our coming west has not cleared them, as we have seen more disturbances to the west, many miles away. However, they are getting less and less, and are now nothing but featureless rises with apparently no crevasses. Our first two hours' pulling to-day....
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From Lashly's Diary
December 29, 1911. A nasty head wind all day and low drift which accumulates in patches and makes it the deuce of a job to get along. We have got to put in long days to do the distance.
December 30, 1911. Sledges going heavy, surface and wind the same as yesterday. We depôted our ski to-night, that is the party returning to-morrow, when we march in the forenoon and camp to change our sledge runners into 10 feet. Done 11 miles but a bit stiff.
December 31, 1911. After doing 7 miles we camped and done the sledges which took us until 11 P.M., and we had to dig out to get them done by then, made a depôt and saw the old year out and the new year in. We all wondered where we should be next New Year. It was so still and quiet; the weather was dull and overcast all night, in fact we have not seen much of the sun lately; it would be so nice if we could sometimes get a glimpse of it, the sun is always cheering.
January 1912. New Year's Day. We pushed on as usual, but were rather late getting away, 9.10—something unusual for us to be as late. The temperature and wind is still very troublesome. We are now ahead of Shackleton's dates and have passed the 87th parallel, so it is only 180 miles to the Pole.
January 2, 1912. The dragging is still very heavy and
we seem to be always climbing higher. We are now over 10,000 feet above sea level. It makes it bad as we don't get enough heat in our food and the tea is not strong enough to run out of the pot. Everything gets cold so quickly, the water boils at about 196° F.
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Scott's own diary of this first fortnight on the plateau shows the immense shove of the man: he was getting every inch out of the miles, every ounce out of his companions. Also he was in a hurry, he always was. That blizzard which had delayed him just before the Gateway, and the resulting surfaces which had delayed him in the lower reaches of the glacier! One can feel the averages running through his brain: so many miles to-day: so many more to-morrow. When shall we come to an end of this pressure? Can we go straight or must we go more west? And then the great undulating waves with troughs eight miles wide, and the buried mountains, causing whirlpools in the ice—how immense, and how annoying. The monotonous march: the necessity to keep the mind concentrated to steer amongst disturbances: the relief of a steady plod when the disturbances cease for a time: then more pressure and more crevasses. Always slog on, slog on. Always a fraction of a mile more.... On December 30 he writes, "We have caught up Shackleton's dates."[239]
They made wonderful marches, averaging nearly fifteen statute miles (13 geog.) a day for the whole-day marches until the Second Return Party turned back on January 4. Scott writes on December 26, "It seems astonishing to be disappointed with a march of 15 (statute) miles when I had contemplated doing little more than 10 with full loads."[240]
The Last Returning Party came back with the news that Scott must reach the Pole with the greatest ease. This seemed almost a certainty: and yet it was, as we know now, a false impression. Scott's plans were based on Shackleton's averages over the same country. The blizzard came and put him badly behind: but despite this he caught Shackleton up. No doubt the general idea then was that Scott was going to have a much easier time than he had expected. We certainly did not realize then, and I do not think Scott himself had any notion of, the price which had been paid.
Of the three teams of four men each which started from the bottom of the Beardmore, Scott's team was a very long way the strongest: it was the team which, with one addition, went to the Pole. Lieutenant Evans' team had mostly done a lot of man-hauling already: it was hungry and I think a bit stale. Bowers' team was fresh and managed to keep up for the most part, but it was very done at the end of the day. Scott's own team went along with comparative ease. From the top of the glacier two teams went on during the last fortnight of which we have been speaking. The first of them was Scott's unit complete, just as it had pulled up the glacier. The second team consisted, I believe, of the men whom Scott considered to be the strongest; two from Evans' team, and two from Bowers'. All Scott's team were fresh to the extent that they had done no man-hauling until we started up the glacier. But two of the other team, Lieutenant Evans and Lashly, had been man-hauling since the breakdown of the second motor on November 1. They had man-hauled four hundred statute miles farther than the rest. Indeed Lashly's man-hauling journey from Corner Camp to beyond 87° 32' S., and back, is one of the great feats of polar travelling.
Surely and not very slowly, Scott's team began to wear down the other team. They were going easily when the others were making heavy weather and were sometimes far behind. During the fortnight they rose, according to the corrected observations, from 7151 feet (Upper Glacier Depôt) to 9392 feet above sea level (Three Degree Depôt). The rarefied air of the Plateau with its cold winds and lower temperatures, just now about -10° to -12° at night and -3° during the day, were having their effect on the second team, as well as the forced marches. This is quite clear from Scott's diary, and from the other diaries also. What did not appear until after the Last Returning Party had turned homewards was that the first team was getting worn out too. This team which had gone so strong up the glacier, which had done those amazingly good marches on the plateau, broke up unexpectedly and in some respects rapidly from the 88th parallel onwards.
Seaman Evans was the first man to crack. He was the heaviest, largest, most muscular man we had, and that was probably one of the main reasons: for his allowance of food was the same as the others. But one mishap which contributed to his collapse seems to have happened during this first fortnight on the plateau. On December 31 the 12-feet sledges were turned into 10-feet ones by stripping off the old scratched runners which had come up the glacier and shipping new 10-feet ones which had been brought for the purpose. This job was done by the seamen, and Evans appears to have had some accident to his hand, which is mentioned several times afterwards.
Meanwhile Scott had to decide whom he was going to take on with him to the Pole,—for it was becoming clear that in all probability he would reach the Pole: "What castles one builds now hopefully that the Pole is ours," he wrote the day after the supporting party left him. The final advance to the Pole was, according to plan, to have been made by four men. We were organized in four-man units: our rations were made up for four men for a week: our tents held four men: our cookers held four mugs, four pannikins and four spoons. Four days before the Supporting Party turned, Scott ordered the second sledge of four men to depôt their ski. It is clear, I suppose, that at this time he meant the Polar Party to consist of four men. I think there can be no doubt that he meant one of those men to be himself: "for your own ear also, I am exceedingly fit and can go with the best of them," he wrote from the top of the glacier.[241]
He changed his mind and went forward a party of five: Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Seaman Evans. I am sure he wished to take as many men as possible to the Pole. He sent three men back: Lieutenant Evans in charge, and two seamen, Lashly and Crean. It is the vivid story of those three men, who turned on January 4 in latitude 87° 32', which is told by Lashly in the next chapter. Scott wrote home: "A last note from a hopeful position. I think it's going to be all right. We have a fine party going forward and arrangements are all going well."[242]
Ten months afterwards we found their bodies.
Chapter XII - The Polar Journey (Continued)
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THE DEVIL. And these are the creatures in whom you discover what you call a Life Force!
DON JUAN. Yes; for now comes the most surprising part of the whole business.
THE STATUE. What's that?
DON JUAN. Why, that you can make any of these cowards brave by simply putting an idea into his head.
THE STATUE. Stuff! As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But that about putting an idea into a man's head is stuff and nonsense. In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.
DON JUAN. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men never really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to further a universal purpose—fighting for an idea, as they call it.
BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman.
IV. RETURNING PARTIES
Two Dog Teams (Meares and Dimitri) turned back from the bottom of the Beardmore Glacier on December 11, 1911. They reached Hut Point on January 4, 1912.
First Supporting Party (Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard, Wright, Keohane) turned back in lat. 85° 15' on December 22, 1911. They reached Hut Point January 26, 1912.
Last Supporting Party (Lieut. Evans, Lashly, Crean) turned back in lat. 87° 32' on January 4, 1912. They reached Hut Point February 22, 1912.
Of the three teams which started up the Beardmore Glacier the first to return, a fortnight after starting the Summit Rations, was known as the First Supporting Party: the second to return, a month after starting the Summit Rations, was known as the Last Supporting Party. Of the two dog-teams under Meares, which had already turned homewards at the bottom of the glacier after having been brought forward farther than had been intended, I will speak later.
I am going to say very little about the First Return Party, which consisted of Atkinson, Wright, Keohane and myself.
Atkinson was in command, and before we left Scott told him to bring the dog-teams out to meet the Polar Party if, as seemed likely, Meares returned home. Atkinson is a naval surgeon and you will find this party referred to in Lashly's diary as "the Doctor's."
"It was a sad job saying good-bye. It was thick, snowing and drifting clouds when we started back after making the depôt, and the last we saw of them as we swung the sledge north was a black dot just disappearing over the next ridge and a big white pressure wave ahead of them.... Scott said some nice things when we said good-bye. Anyway he has only to average seven miles a day to get to the Pole on full rations—it's practically a cert for him. I do hope he takes Bill and Birdie. The view over the ice-falls and pressure by the Mill Glacier from the top of the ice-falls is one of the finest things I have ever seen. Atch is doing us proud."[243]
No five hundred mile journey down the Beardmore and across the Barrier can be uneventful, even in midsummer. We had the same dreary drag, the same thick weather, fears and anxieties which other parties have had. A touch of the same dysentery and sickness: the same tumbles and crevasses: the same Christmas comforts, a layer of plum pudding at the bottom of our cocoa, and some rocks collected from a moraine under the Cloudmaker: the same groping for tracks: the same cairns lost and found, the same snow-blindness and weariness, nightmares, food dreams.... Why repeat? Comparatively speaking it was a very little journey: and yet the distance from Cape Evans to the top of the Beardmore Glacier and back is 1164 statute miles. Scott's Southern Journey of 1902-3 was 950 statute miles.