'Tis the night of our dear Saviour's birth.
After this came an unintelligible sentence, followed by a phrase about a thrill of hope. In the past I had played the record over and over again, trying to make out the words so that I could sing them. I have never succeeded; and that day I vowed that, if I came out of this affair alive, I would lead a national reform movement insisting upon clearer diction by sopranos for the peace of mind of explorers who might be tempted to take up singing late in life.
Chapter Nine — JUNE III: THE PROPOSAL
June was a period of marches and counter-marches, of victories and retreats. Now I was overtaken by the first serious reverse since May's disastrous ending. The 17th was a Sunday — a radio schedule day. My diary has no entry covering the date for the reason that I could not summon up the will to write. All the ground that had been so painfully recovered meanwhile was whipped from under my feet in a single morning.
June 18
. . Yesterday my invisible enemy struck again. The engine had been running badly toward the end of my previous schedule, so for this one I started the engine about half an hour before schedule time in order to make whatever adjustments were necessary. As usual, since May 31st, I took the precaution of clearing the ice out of the ventilator over the engine. Tinkered with the mixture valve for about twenty minutes or so; the engine was just running nicely when I felt very dizzy and dropped to my knees. Dropping to my knees was instinctive. I crawled back to my shack, shut the door, and lay on the bunk waiting for schedule time. I believe that I was late coming on and had a very tough time holding out during the conversation. Hope my answers on Charlie's questions satisfied him.
I kept my head low when I turned off the engine, but it was running smoother and there were less fumes. I'm back, I'm afraid, where I was the first four days of this month. I'd like to say more, but for some reason writing is taking too much out of me tonight. The worst of it is that Murphy, Poulter, and Innes-Taylor were standing by to discuss a plan for advancing the date set for the start of the spring operations. Indeed, they are already talking at Little America about the possibilities of laying bases with the tractors as early as August, in order to lengthen the field season and with it the scope of the scientific program. Apparently they have been inspired to attempt this as a result of reconstructing the tractor. But it was all pretty vague.
This entry is significant, at least to me, for what it fails to say. Grim as it is, it does not begin to describe what I went through. All this time I was deliberately understating the facts, since the diary was written primarily for my family, and in case I did not survive they would be spared the unpleasant details of my last days. For example, that evening I was too far gone to go topside for the 8 p.m. observation, or even to transfer data from the automatic instruments to the Weather Bureau form. That night I scarcely slept at all, but tossed instead in my sleeping bag, racked by pain and literally shaken by the thumping in my heart. At times I thought that if this kept up I must go out of my head. I vomited up the little milk I was able to swallow, and my arms were too weak to mop up the mess. Curled up in the bunk, I mumbled like a monk fingering his beads. When my voice stopped, the silence crowded in. In the calm between the rushes of pain I had the sense of waiting, of waiting and listening for something to happen; waiting with a pent-up expectancy that was neither fear nor hope, but rather midway between.
Starting the day had always been hard; now it became a task for Hercules. I had to push the night back and the day ahead; the weight of the solar system cut into my shoulders. It was all I could do to force myself out of the sleeping bag in the morning. By then the stove would have been out at least twelve hours; my lips bled from where my teeth bit into them. You asked for it, the small voice within me said; and here it is. For all my resolve, I doubt whether I'd have been able to survive this second relapse if it had not been for a half a dozen heat pads which I found in a box in the food tunnel.
These little flat pads, shaped like envelopes and weighing about a pound, contained a sandlike chemical which gives off heat when water is added. At night I took two of these pads to bed with me, together with a full thermos jug. On awakening, I'd pour a little water into the pads and knead them gently until the warmth came; then, with a string around my waist, I'd wear them, one fore and one aft, between the pants and underwear. Without refilling, the pads stayed warm for about an hour, by which time the stove would have heated up the shack. I used the pads sparingly, not knowing how long the supply would last; but I blessed the supply officer for the illogical impulse which had prompted him to throw those things into the Advance Base gear.