From this time onward their camp-life was wholly, pleasant, except to Lashly who had an attack of snow-blindness. Apart from that they were in the best of condition for the hard marching in front of them, and when on the night of the 20th they reached their second depôt and could look out towards the sea, they did not care how far round they might have to walk if only that stubborn sheet of ice had broken away. But it was too evident that their homeward track might be as straight as they chose, as only in the far distance was open water to be seen, and with sorrow they realized that there must still be many miles of ice between it and the Discovery.
Late on Christmas Eve they were once more on board the ship after an absence of fifty-nine days, during which they had traveled 725 miles. Taking the eighty-one days of absence which had constituted the whole sledding season, Scott, Evans and Lashly had covered 1,098 miles, and, not including minor undulations, had climbed heights which totaled to 19,000 feet. On getting back to the Discovery Scott found only Koettlitz, Handsley and Quartley on board, because all the rest of the company had gone to the north to saw through the ice; and during the few days of rest that he allowed himself before going to the sawing-camp, he was able to read the reports of the officers who had led the other journeys, and to see what excellent work had been done during his absence.
Ferrar's survey and Skelton's photographic work had added materially to the value of the western journey; the party led by Barne and Mulock to the south had met with ill-fortune from the start, but throughout the journey Mulock used the theodolite indefatigably, with the results that this stretch of coast-line was more accurately plotted than any other part of Victoria Land, and that the positions and height of over two hundred mountain peaks were fixed. Barne also obtained a very good indication of the movement of the Great Barrier ice-sheet. During Royds' journey, on which the party went on very short food allowance, Bernacchi took a most interesting series of magnetic observations. And although to Bernacchi himself belongs the greatest credit, some reflected glory, at any rate, fell upon his companions, because they had to stay shivering outside the tent while he was at work inside it.
Wilson had not only been busy with the penguins at Cape Crozier, but had also made a complete examination of the enormous and interesting pressure ridges which form the junction of the Great Barrier ice-mass with the land, and subsequently had spent much time in studying the windless area to the south of Ross Island. Also, with Armitage and Heald, he had made an excellent little journey, on which Armitage obtained some very good photographs, sufficient in themselves to prove the receding glacial conditions of the whole continent.
In short during Scott's absence his companions had been working strenuously to increase the supply of information; so when the second sledding-season ended, they could with reason congratulate themselves that the main part of their work was done.
CHAPTER X
RELEASE
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And Thor Set his shoulder hard against the stern To push the ship through... ...and the water gurgled in And the ship floated on the waves and rock'd. M. ARNOLD. |
After a few days on board Scott became restless to see what was going on in the sawing-camp, and on the morning of the 31st he started off with Evans, Lashly and Handsley to march the ten and a half miles to the north. When the instructions for this attempt to free the Discovery were drawn up, there had been, of course, no telling how broad the ice-sheet would be when operations began, and Scott had been obliged to assume that it would be nearly the same as in the previous year, when the open water had extended to the Dellbridge Islets about eleven miles from the ship. There he directed that the camp should be made, and Armitage, on whom in Scott's absence the command had devolved, made all preparations in accordance with the instructions he had received.
At the outset, however, a difficulty awaited him, as in the middle of December the open water, instead of being up to the islets, ended at least ten miles farther to the north. Under the circumstances he considered it dangerous to take the camp out to the ice-edge, and so the sawing work had been begun in the middle of the ice-sheet instead of at its edge.