The month after sunrise was a busy time for all hands, for there was much to be done before the whole strength of the Expedition was diverted to the sledging campaign.
Although there was broad daylight outside the ship, the work inside had still to be done by lamp and candle-light. In one place a group of figures might be seen surrounded by open packing-cases, carefully weighing out sledging-rations, and dividing the daily allowances in little bags made of fancy calico intended for theatrical purposes; in another an officer and the captain of his sledge might be seen filling a large gutta-percha box with the stores to be placed in depôt for his return journey. Everywhere through the ship men were busy with needle and thread making many small improvements in the fit of their duffle suits or holland overalls; some were adding linen leggings to their mocassins, others strengthening the soles with thick soft leather cut from the top of their fishermen’s boots. The general sledging outfit was of course rigorously adhered to, but each man made such small changes in the fit of his clothes as his autumn experience suggested.
During the darkness the snow had hardened considerably; in many places a sledge now travelled readily where it would have sunk out of sight in the autumn, and as early as the 28th February an exercise party travelling with a dog-sledge to the south reached in a few hours the spot from which our autumn sledges had returned baffled after a ten days’ struggle towards the “Discovery.”
But the snow was not hardened everywhere. There were many drifts and patches along the shore that were not easily crossed except on snow-shoes. With these, travelling over smooth snow was easy, and a man could even pull along another seated on a small sledge, faster than a third could wade beside them. No Arctic expedition had hitherto used snow-shoes, though the Germans three hundred miles south of us on the east coast of Greenland had found it necessary to extemporise rough substitutes during the winter. Some of our men made two excellent copies of a well-worn pair presented by Dr. Rae to one of our officers. These were at times most useful, but much of our travelling was over snow and ice so rugged that no one, however expert, would have attempted snow-shoeing.
Constant preparation for the sledging soon superseded the winter evening routine. School was suspended, and the theatrical season closed on 24th February with a very successful burlesque written by our chaplain. On the following Thursday the weekly lectures were concluded by an address from the captain on the sledging work we were about to undertake, and on the prospects that lay before us. Those prospects were not promising, however we looked at them; they were no more encouraging than when we first rounded Cape Rawson and saw no land to the northwards. The very first elements of success were absent, but it was still possible that the land might trend to the north somewhere beyond Cape Joseph Henry. It was possible, too, that sledges journeying northward over the floes might reach some land where depôts could be left, and which might next year serve as a fresh base for poleward sledges.
A few in the ship cherished a third hope, founded on the character of our ice. It seemed not unlikely that if sledges could penetrate that zone of the floating ice-cap which had been fractured year after year by contact with the shores, they might reach a broad mass of almost continental ice rounded into hills and valleys by ages of summers, but not offering insuperable obstacles to poleward travel.
If the floes had not been in rapid motion all the autumn, and if Sir Leopold M’Clintock’s method of pushing forward sledges on depôts deposited in the autumn could have been applied to the polar pack, we might start from the land with fair hopes of practical success. But, as it was, our sledges would have to leave shore carrying all their fuel and provisions, and therefore greatly limited in point of time, for no men can drag more than between forty and fifty days’ provisions and fuel, together with tent, bedding, cooking-gear, and sledge. The system of supporting sledges was still applicable. By it additional sledges would fall back from the main party when say one-third of their provisions were expended, retaining a third to return on, and filling up the advancing sledges with the remainder.
We were by no means certain that the motion of the floes would not even now prove a serious obstacle. Even as late as January they were heard roaring and crushing in the darkness to seaward, and their pressure forced our protecting floeberg somewhat shoreward, cracking and buckling up the floes, and heeling the ship over four degrees. For months, however, little sign of motion had been apparent except at tidal periods, when it sometimes came with curious suddenness, as if the tide wave had all at once overcome the resistance of the ice that bound it. For example, the morning of the 12th of March was beautifully calm and still, and few but those whose special duty it was knew that a high tide was due that day. I was engaged picking out some stones grooved and scratched by ice-motion from an overturned “floeberg” not far from the ship, when suddenly a curious faint sound came from the north-west, at first a dull, indistinct hum, but in a moment it grew nearer and louder, like the rush of a railway train. Then, as it swept down along the beach, the ice cracked visibly in every direction with a sharp rattle like musketry, and a loud rush of water under the floes came so suddenly and unexpectedly that I ran to the top of the berg with a vague idea that the ice was breaking up. But in a moment the tide wave had passed off to the south-west, and all was still again.