CHAPTER V
The Depôt Journey
The dropping of the daylight in the west.
Robert Browning.
| January to March 1911 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Scott | Meares | Crean |
| Wilson | Atkinson | Forde |
| Lieut. Evans | Cherry-Garrard | Dimitri |
| Bowers | Gran | |
| Oates | Keohane | |
Imaginative friends of the thirteen men who started from Cape Evans on January 24, 1911, may have thought of them as athletes, trained for some weeks or months to endure the strains which they were to face, sleeping a good nine hours a night, eating carefully regulated meals and doing an allotted task each day under scientific control.
They would be far from the mark. For weeks we had turned in at midnight too tired to take off our clothes, and had been lucky if we were allowed to sleep until 5 a.m. We had eaten our meals when we could, and we had worked in the meantime just as hard as it was physically possible to do. If we sat down on a packing-case we went to sleep.
And we finally left the camp in a state of hurry bordering upon panic. Since the ice to the south of us, the road to the Barrier, was being nibbled away by thaw, winds and tides, it was impossible to lead the ponies down from the Cape on to the sea-ice. The open sea was before us and on our right front. It was necessary to lead them up among the lava blocks which lay on the escarpment of Erebus, south-eastwards towards Land's End, and thence to slide them down a steep but rubbly slope to the ice which still remained. As a matter of fact that ice went out the very next day.
During the last two days provisions had been bagged with the utmost despatch; sledges packed; letters scribbled; clothing sorted and rough alterations to it made. Scott was busy, with Bowers' help, making such arrangements as could be suggested for a further year's stay, for which the ship was to order the necessaries. Oates was busy weighing out the pony food for the journey, sorting harness, and generally managing a most unruly mob of ponies. Many were the arguments as to the relative value of a pair of socks or their equivalent weight in tobacco, for we were allowed 12 lbs. of private gear apiece, to consist of everything which we did not habitually wear on our bodies. This included such things as:
- Sleeping-boots.
- Sleeping-socks.
- Extra pair of day socks.
- A shirt.
- Tobacco and pipe.
- Notebook for diary and pencil.
- Extra balaclava helmet.
- Extra woollen mitts.
- Housewife containing buttons, needles, darning needles, thread and wool.
- Extra pair of finnesko.
- Big safety-pins with which to hang up our socks.
- And perhaps one small book.