In a moment the whole team were sinking; two by two they vanished from sight, each pair struggling for foothold. Osman, the leader, put forth all his strength and most wonderfully kept a foothold. The sledge stopped on the brink of the crevasse, and Scott and Meares jumped aside.
In another moment the situation was realized. They had actually been traveling along the bridge of a crevasse, the sledge had stopped on it, while the dogs hung in their harness in the abyss. 'Why the sledge and ourselves didn't follow the dogs we shall never know. I think a fraction of a pound of added weight must have taken us down.' Directly the sledge had been hauled clear of the bridge and anchored, they peered into the depths of the cracks. The dogs, suspended in all sorts of fantastic positions, were howling dismally and almost frantic with terror. Two of them had dropped out of their harness and, far below, could be seen indistinctly on a snow-bridge. The rope at either end of the chain had bitten deep into the snow at the side of the crevasse and with the weight below could not possibly be moved.
By this time assistance was forthcoming from Wilson and Cherry-Garrard, the latter hurriedly bringing the Alpine rope, the exact position of which on the sledge he most fortunately knew. The prospect, however, of rescuing the team was not by any means bright, and for some minutes every attempt failed. In spite of their determined efforts they could get not an inch on the main trace of the sledge or on the leading rope, which with a throttling pressure was binding poor Osman to the snow.
Then, as their thoughts became clearer, they set to work on a definite plan of action. The sledge was unloaded, and the tent, cooker, and sleeping-bags were carried to a safe place; then Scott, seizing the lashing off Meares' sleeping-bag, passed the tent-poles across the crevasse, and with Meares managed to get a few inches on the leading line. This freed Osman, whose harness was immediately cut. The next step was to secure the leading rope to the main trace and haul up together. By this means one dog was rescued and unlashed, but the rope already had cut so far back at the edge that efforts to get more of it were useless.
SNOWED-UP TENT AFTER THREE DAYS' BLIZZARD.
Photo by Lieut. T. Gran.
'We could now unbend the sledge and do that for which we should have aimed from the first, namely, run the sledge across the gap and work from it.' So the sledge was put over the crevasse and pegged down on both sides, Wilson holding on to the anchored trace while the others worked at the leader end. The leading rope, however, was so very small that Scott was afraid of its breaking, and Meares was lowered down to secure the Alpine rope to the leading end of the trace; when this had been done the chance of rescuing the dogs at once began to improve.
Two by two the dogs were hauled up until eleven out of the thirteen were again in safety. Then Scott began to wonder if the two other dogs could not be saved, and the Alpine rope was paid down to see if it was long enough to reach the bridge on which they were coiled. The rope was 90 feet, and as the amount remaining showed that the depth of the bridge was about 65 feet, Scott made a bowline and insisted upon being lowered down. The bridge turned out to be firm, and he quickly got hold of the dogs and saw them hauled to the surface. But before he could be brought up terrific howls arose above, and he had to be left while the rope-tenders hastened to stop a fight between the dogs of the two teams.
'We then hauled Scott up,' Cherry-Garrard says; 'it was all three of us could do, my fingers a good deal frost-bitten in the end. That was all the dogs, Scott has just said that at one time he never hoped to get back with the thirteen, or even half of them. When he was down in the crevasse he wanted to go off exploring, but we dissuaded him.... He kept on saying, "I wonder why this is running the way it is, you expect to find them at right angles."'
For over two hours the work of rescue had continued, and after it was finished the party camped and had a meal, and congratulated themselves on a miraculous escape. Had the sledge gone down Scott and Meares must have been badly injured, if not killed outright, but as things had turned out even the dogs showed wonderful signs of recovery after their terrible experience.