The menu was, needless to say, Wilson's work, the exquisite dishes Clissold produced, the maitre d'hotel was Birdie, and Cherry-Garrard the producer of surprises in the shape of toys which adorned the Christmas Tree that followed on the dinner. Everybody got something from the tree, which was in reality no tree at all, for it was a cleverly constructed dummy, with sticks for branches and coloured paper leaves. Still, it carried little fairy candles and served its purpose well.
Then I must not forget the greatest treat of all: an exhibition of slides showing the life about our winter quarters and the general work of the Expedition from the starting away in New Zealand to this actual day almost in the hut. The slides were wonderful and they showed every stage of the ice through which we had come and in which we lived. There were penguin pictures, whales and seals, bird life in the pack, flash light photographs of people and ponies, pictures of Erebus and other splendid and familiar landmarks, and, in short, a magnificent pictorial record of events, for Ponting had been everywhere with his camera, and it is only to be regretted that the Expedition did not take him to the Pole. This was, of course, impossible, when everything had to give way to food. Following the photographic display and the Christmas Tree came the only Antarctic dance we enjoyed. Few of us remember much about it for we were very merry, thanks to the wine, and there was considerable horseplay. I remember dancing with the cook whilst Oates danced with Anton. Everybody took a turn, and associated with this dance I might mention that Clissold so far forgot himself as to call Scott "Good old Truegg." Truegg was the composition used by us for cooking in various ways omelets, buttered eggs, puddings, and cakes of all kinds, and, although it was a great boon to the Expedition, we had by this time tired of it. Still, we used it as a term of endearment, but nobody in his sober senses would have dreamt of calling our much respected Commander "Good old Truegg"; the brandy punch must have been responsible for Clissold's mixing up of names! We had now arrived at the stage when it was time to shut up, the officers became interested in an aurora display and gradually rolled off to bed. It was left to me to see the seamen turned in; they were good-humoured but obstreperous, and not until 2 a.m. did silence and order once more reign in the hut.
Very wisely our leader decided on June 23 being kept as a day of rest; our digestions were upset and we took this time off to make and mend clothes, and returned to our winter routine, a little subdued perhaps, on June 24.
CHAPTER IX
PRELIMINARY EXPLORATIONS
So much for the winter life up to date; no great excitements, nothing untoward, but a remarkable bonhomie obtaining in our little company despite the tedium of so many days of winter gloom. On June 27 Dr. Wilson with Bowers and Cherry-Garrard started on a remarkable journey to Cape Crozier, nearly seventy miles distant from Cape Evans, via Hut Point and the Barrier. The object of these intrepid souls was to observe the incubation of the Emperor Penguins at their rookery, which was known to exist near the junction point of the Barrier Edge with the rocky cliff south of Cape Crozier. It must be borne in mind that this was the first Antarctic midwinter journey, and that the three men must of necessity face abnormally low temperature's and unheard of hardships whilst making the sledge journey over the icy Barrier. We had gathered enough knowledge on the autumn sledge journeys and in the days of the Discovery expedition to tell us this, so that it was not without considerable misgivings that Captain Scott permitted Wilson to carry the winter expedition to Cape Crozier into being. The scope of my little volume only permits me to tell this story in brief. No very detailed account has yet been published, although Cherry-Garrard, the only survivor of the three, wrote the far too modest memoir of the journey which has been published in Volume II of "Scott's Last Expedition."
Apart from the zoological knowledge Wilson hoped to gain from the Cape Crozier visit in mid-winter, there was a wealth of other information to be collected concerning the Barrier conditions, particularly the meteorological conditions, but above all we knew that with such quick and reliable observers as Wilson and his companions we must derive additional experience in the matter of sledging rations, for the party had agreed to make experiments in order to arrive at the standard ration to be adopted for the colder weather we must face during the second half of the forthcoming Polar journey.
Wilson took two small 9 ft. sledges, and after being photographed was helped out to Glacier Tongue by a small hurrah party. In the bad light he was handicapped from the very first, and it took the party two days to get on to the Ice Barrier. Their progress was dreadfully slow, which was not to be wondered at, for they were pulling loads of 250 lb. per man, the surfaces were beyond anything they had faced hitherto, and the temperatures seldom above 60 degrees. Relay work had to be resorted to, and in consequence the party took eighteen days to reach Cape Crozier. They met with good weather, that is, calm weather, to begin with, but the bad surfaces handicapped them severely. After rounding Cape Mackay they reached a wind-swept area and met with a series of blizzards. Their best light was moonlight, and they were denied this practically by overcast skies. Picture their hardships: frozen bags to sleep in, frozen finnesko to put their feet in every time they struck camp, finger-tips always getting frost-bitten and sometimes toes and heels; no comfort was to be derived within camp, for, at the best, they could only sit and shiver when preparing the food, and once the bags were unrolled to sleep in more trouble came. It is on record that Cherry-Garrard took as long as three-quarters of an hour to break his way into his sleeping-bag, and once inside it he merely shook and froze. The party used a double tent for this journey, that is to say, a light lining was fitted on the inner side of the five bamboo tent poles, so that when the ordinary wind-proof tent cloth was spread over the poles an air space was provided. There was, I may say, a sharp difference of opinion as to the value of the tent; Wilson's party swore by it and Scott was always loud in its praise. The sailors hated it and despised it; they always argued, when consulted on the subject of the double tent, that it collected snow and rime and added much to the weights we had to drag along. Perhaps they were right, and I remember one occasion when two members of the Expedition dumped the inner lining after carrying it many hundred miles with the remark, "Good-bye, you blighter, you've had a damn good ride!"
The scene inside the little green tent baffles description: the three men's breath and the steam from the cooker settles in no time on the sides of the tent in a thick, white rime; the least movement shakes this down in a shower which brings clammy discomfort to all; the dimmest of light is given by the sledging lantern with its edible candle (for Messrs. Price and Co. had made our candles eatable and not poisonous), everything is frozen stiff, fur boots, bags and fur mitts break if roughly handled, for they are as hard as boards. The cold has carved deep ruts in the faces of the little company who, despite their sufferings and discomforts, smile and keep cheerful without apparent effort. This cheerfulness and the fragrant smell of the cooking pemmican are the two redeeming features of a dreadful existence, but the discomforts are only a foretaste of what is to come—one night the temperature fell to 77 degrees below zero, that is 109 degrees of frost. There is practically no record of such low temperature, although Captain Scott found that Roald Amundsen in one of his northern journeys encountered something nearly as bad. One cannot wonder that Wilson's party scarcely slept at all, but their outward experiences were nothing to what they put up with at Cape Crozier, which was reached on July 15. To get on to the slopes of Mount Terror near Crozier the party climbed over great pressure ridges and up a steep slope to a position between the end of a moraine terrace and the conspicuous hillock known as The Knoll. In the gap here the last camp was made in a windswept snow hollow, a stone hut was constructed behind a land ridge above this hollow, the party using a quantity of loose rocks and hard snow to build with. Cherry-Garrard did most of the building, while the others provided the material, for, in his methodical way, Cherry had built a model hut before leaving Cape Evans. The hut was 800 ft. above sea-level, roofed with canvas, with one of the sledges as a rafter to support the canvas roof.
On the 19th July the party descended by the snow slopes to the Emperor penguin rookery. They had great trouble in making this descent, on account of crevasses in the ice slopes which overhung the level way under the rock cliffs. As a matter of fact, the attempt on the 19th proved abortive, although the little band got close to the rookery. They reached it successfully on the 20th when the light was almost failing, and were mortified to find only about one hundred Emperor penguins in place of the two or three thousand birds which the rookery had been found to contain in the "Discovery" days. Possibly the early date accounted for the absence of Emperors; however, half a dozen eggs were collected, and three of these found their way home to England. Wilson picked up rounded pieces of ice at the rookery which the stupid Emperors had been cherishing, fondly imagining they were eggs; evidently the maternal instinct of the Emperor penguin is very strong.