The days that followed were hardening knots in the strands of the hours. I managed to keep up the observations; I wound the clocks and changed the sheets; and when I couldn't get topside I faithfully copied the data on form 1083. But none of these things seemed to have any connection with reality. While one part of me groped about these tasks, another part seemed to be watching from the bunk. At night it was just as bad. Propped up in the sleeping bag, with the top of a box resting on my knees, I tried to play Canfield. The baffling weakness in my arms as I dealt out the cards continued to vex me unreasonably; when the game went against me I threw the cards on the deck. I picked up Ludwig's Napoleon, but after a page or two the letters became blurred and my eyes ached. You can't go on, the querulous small voice insisted. This is habit carrying on, not you. You are through.
Wednesday noon, June 20th, with two heat pads belted around my waist and wearing furs, I climbed topside to escape the unmitigated gloom of the shack. A heap of drift lay in the lee of the stovepipe; on this I sat, too exhausted to walk. It was snowing gently. In the east and south the horizon was as dark as the Barrier itself; but in the north a watery smear of crimson rouged the horizon line, the farthest light that the vanished sun could throw past the earth's round. The winter night was approaching its climax. In two days would come the winter solstice, when the sun, at its maximum declination of 231/2 degrees below the horizon, would stand still on its northward journey, and then head back into the Southern Hemisphere.
Beyond the Barrier, beyond Little America, and beyond the frozen wastes of the Ross Sea, the sun was still performing its daily, inevitable miracle. It was queer to think that at a calculable instant warmth and light were washing into one part of the world as they ebbed from another. That in some longitudes millions of people were going to bed, and in other longitudes other millions, speaking different languages, were responding to different compulsions, were awakening to the full light of day. All that seemed unbearably remote. Where I was, it would take the sun as long to return as it had taken it to go. Here it was June. It would be August 27 — by the nautical almanac and a little arithmetic — before the sun returned to Latitude 80 degrees 08 minutes South. And by that time I should be past caring.
But you have been through the worst of it, the inner voice said; now is the time for stocktaking. Every day after the solstice the sun would climb a little higher, and the light in the north would wax a little stronger at noon; and every day, as the dawn-light washed in over the Barrier, the flag-marked trail between Advance Base and Little America would be lifted a little out of darkness and toward the light. But you won't see it accomplished, the inner voice said; yet something desperate within me denied the prophecy. For, if I had one incorruptible hope now, it was to see the sun and the daylight marching over the Barrier. That much at least I must have; the will to live would concede nothing short of it.
As I sat there, this thought suddenly brought to mind the idle conversation that Little America had had with me over starting base-laying operations with the return of the sun in August. For the first time I perceived a possible relevance to my own desperate affairs. They must come this way — they must come here. Now at last I had an overwhelming incentive for wanting to see the sun.
Until then I had paid little attention to the base-laying talk, leaving it for the officers at Little America to decide for themselves the details of these preliminary operations. There were two directions these operations would take. One was to the east, toward Marie Byrd Land. The other was to the south toward the Queen Mauds. The second would carry them past my door; and since this was so, the conviction took root in my mind that I owed it to my family and myself to bring them here first, and at the earliest date consistent with safety. This was the only sensible attitude to take. The next day was schedule day. When I talked to Little America tomorrow, I would give Poulter a carefully-phrased directive, urging him to hasten preparations for the early journey, and yet phrased so carefully that he would have no reason to read any personal urgency into it. It had to be handled that way or not at all.
Having made this resolve, I went below feeling more hopeful than I had felt in nearly four months. In the diary that evening I wrote, ". . For the first time since the 16th I feel strong enough not to find writing a chore. The sun is a long way off, but October is a whole light year farther. If they will only change the radio schedule to the afternoon, my cup will be running over.»
* * *
In the morning I met Little America on the dot. «Congratulations on the punctuality,» Charlie Murphy said. «How come you were so curt with us last Sunday?»
The directness of the question took me aback for an instant. Well, the truth would do no harm. I keyed a short message saying that fumes from the engine had made me feel «rocky,» and I had therefore decided to shut down until I could find out what was wrong.