We made our way very slowly, sometimes waiting twenty minutes for the floe on which we were to touch the next one in the direction we were trying to go, but before us in the distance was a region of sea-ice which appeared to slope gradually up on to the fast Barrier beyond. As we got nearer we saw a dark line appear at intervals between the two. This we considered was a crevasse at the edge of the Barrier which was opening and shutting with the very big swell which was running, and on which all the floes were bobbing up and down. We told one another that we could rush the ponies over this as it closed.
We approached the Barrier and began to rise up on the sloping floes which had edged the Barrier and so on to small bergs which had calved from the Barrier itself. Leaving Crean with the ponies, Bowers and I went forward to prospect, and rose on to a berg from which we hoped to reach the Barrier.
I can never forget the scene that met us. Between us and the Barrier was a lane of some fifty yards wide, a seething cauldron. Bergs were calving off as we watched: and capsizing: and hitting other bergs, splitting into two and falling apart. The Killers filled the whole place. Looking downwards into a hole between our berg and the next, a hole not bigger than a small room, we saw at least six whales. They were so crowded that they could only lie so as to get their snouts out of the water, and my memory is that their snouts were bottle-nosed. At this moment our berg split into two parts and we hastily retreated to the lower and safer floes.
Now in the Zoological Report of the Discovery Expedition Wilson states that the true identity of the Bottle-nosed whale (Hyperoodon rostrata) in Antarctic Seas has not been conclusively established. But that inasmuch as it certainly frequents seas so far as 48° S. latitude it is probable that certain whales which he and other members of that expedition saw frequenting the edge of the ice were, as they appeared to be, Bottle-nosed whales. For my part, without great knowledge of whales, I am convinced that these whales which lay but twenty feet below us were whales of this species.
After our rescue by Scott we pitched our tents, as has been described, at least half a mile from the fast edge of the Barrier. All night long, or as it really was, early morning, the Killers were snorting and blowing under the Barrier, and sometimes, it seemed, under our tents. Time and again some member of the party went out of the tent to see if the Barrier had not broken farther back, but there was no visible change, and it must have been that the apparently solid ice on which we were, was split up by crevasses by the big swell which had been running, and that round us, hidden by snow bridges, were leads of water in which whales were cruising in search of seal.
The next day most of the ice had gone out to sea, and I do not think the whales were so numerous. The most noticeable thing about them that day was the organization shown by the band of whales which appeared after Bowers' pony, Uncle Bill, had fallen between two floes, and we were trying to get him towards the Barrier. "Good God, look at the whales," said some one, and there, in a pool of water behind the floe on which we were working, lay twelve great whales in perfect line, facing the floe. And out in front of them, like the captain of a company of soldiers, was another. As we turned they dived as one whale, led by the big fellow in front, and we certainly expected that they would attack the floe on which we stood. Whether they never did so, or whether they tried and failed, for the floes here were fifteen or sixteen feet thick, I do not know; we never saw them again.
One other incident of those days is worth recalling. "Cherry, Crean, we're floating out to sea," was the startling awakening from Bowers, standing in his socks outside the tent at 4.30 a.m. that Wednesday morning. And indeed at first sight on getting outside the tent it looked a quite hopeless situation. I thought it was madness to try and save the ponies and gear when, it seemed, the only chance at all of saving the men was an immediate rush for the Barrier, and I said so. "Well, I'm going to try," was Bowers' answer, and, quixotic or no, he largely succeeded. I never knew a man who treated difficulties with such scorn.
There must be some of my companions who look back upon Hut Point with a peculiar fondness, such as men get for places where they have experienced great joys and great trials. And Hut Point has an atmosphere of its own. I do not know what it is. Partly aesthetic, for the sea and great mountains, and the glorious colour effects which prevail in spring and autumn, would fascinate the least imaginative; partly mysterious, with the Great Barrier knocking at your door, and the smoke of Erebus by day and the curtain of Aurora by night; partly the associations of the place—the old hut, the old landmarks, so familiar to those who know the history of the Discovery Expedition, the stakes in the snow, the holes for which ice was dug to water the ship, Vince's Cross on the Point. Now there is another Cross, on Observation Hill.
And yet when we first arrived the hut was comfortless enough. Wilson and Meares and Gran had been there some days; they had found some old bricks and a grid, and there was an open blubber fire in the middle of the floor. There was no outlet for the smoke and smuts and it was impossible to see your neighbour, to speak without coughing, or to open your eyes long before they began to smart. Atkinson and Crean had cleared the floor of ice in our absence, but the space between the lower and upper roofs was solid with blue ice, and the lower roof sagged down in places in a dangerous way. The wind howled continuously and to say that the hut was cold is a very mild expression of the reality.