Beyond the Great South Wall: The Secret of the Antarctic

by Frank Savile

The waters were still gushing up and widening upon the basin, the circling eddies helping our towers as they dragged us tediously toward the cleft. The shocks from the mountain came with greater frequency, making the pool shiver into tiny surges that fled across it, to break in ripples on the further shore. Another of the peaks toppled and fell with a resounding crash.

The fissure began to disappear amid the cloud of low-hung steam, and it was with difficulty we steered our course for it. A sudden outcry from the boat that strained ahead made us aware that we were forging with all the powers of six stout oars straight at an opening that was yet a dozen feet above tide-level. It was only by the smartness of the boat’s crew, who doubled sharply in their tracks and snatched a rope flung to them from our stern, that we escaped inglorious shipwreck. They tugged lustily in the contrary direction and managed to stop the ship’s way. Then, having us more or less motionless, they rested on their oars, and we floated aimlessly, waiting further developments, for the fissure still widened.

We were silent, for the awe and anxiety of our position kept us tongue-tied, and every one was on deck. The sailors fidgeted up and down, now and again shifting perfunctorily some of the heaped confusion of the decks, but stopping every minute to gaze inquiringly at the peak, as roar after roar and shock after shock swept down from it. We were like malefactors awaiting execution, but hoping desperately against hope for a reprieve.

Then a thunderous boom, fifty times louder than any that had preceded it, broke from the bosom of the hill. The pinnacles swayed, tottered, and bowed earthward; not one but was swept from its base. A red storm of lava surged boiling over the crater brim, swelled in a torrent down the channel through the heart of the glacier, and dashed in a cloud of steam into the far end of the lake. A vapor mist, impenetrable as a desert sandstorm, closed over the waters, but ere it fell we saw a huge threatening wave uprise and swing across at us in fury irresistible. Behind it was all the impact force of the fiery mass, but long ere it reached us the fog rolled down and shut us in in its warm gray veil.

A rending crash broke from the cliff in front, and the cold, hungry ocean came clamoring through, beating upon the outcharging tide. For some furious seconds our ship plunged and reared among the fighting billows like a restive horse. Then from the boat came a cry as the pursuing wave reached her and flung boiling spray upon the men. Like a toy she was raised and flung toward us. The wall of water struck with a thud below our stern, and thrust us, bow forward, at the gap. Swifter than paddle or screw could have borne us we sped upon the crest, driving straight into the new reft opening.

A gasp went up from every throat, and not one of us but breathed a prayer. Two seconds more and the dark walls were flashing by on each side. Then with a dying effort the great wave flung us far out into the ice-bestrewed main, diffusing itself up the long lanes of floating berg, roaring and clanging amid the splinters of the floe.

Spinning on yet before that mighty impulse, lopsided, with ballast adrift, with fore-topmast gone and propeller-shaft broken, we fled forth from our prison, dragging the boat astern with her bows out of the water, and from boat and ship alike went up a mighty cheer of deliverance as the great crags faded into the steam-cloud behind us. And so did we accomplish our marvellous escape.

As the great surge sank to ripples, we sprang to work, full of the energy of relief and gratitude. Some set to right our littered decks, some descended into the hold to replace the shifted ballast, while Eccles, debarred from work by his broken collar-bone, stood over his subordinates and admonished them with many a good Glasgow expletive to seek drills to rivet a collar on the split propeller. Rafferty from between his oily compresses roared curses and commands at the deck-hands, and all, crew and passengers, were busy as best they knew how. And behind the deck-house my love and I found time to seal with a kiss the promise of new life that had had its birth under the very Shadow of Death.

The red glow of the fire-pillar was beginning to pale into the tints of dawn before we had cleared our deck into any similitude of tidiness. All night long we toiled, relieving each other in crews of eight at the towing. For the heat ashore made the breeze beat landward with aggravating steadiness, and but for persistent effort we should have drifted back on to the sheer cliffs of the wall, and pounded our timbers into matchwood on its iron face.

So wearily the oarsmen toiled and drew the unwilling ship by slow by-ways amid the herding pack-ice. And down in the engine-room Eccles sat to swing his sound arm upon the gearing and spit imperious blasphemy at his underlings, who drilled and drilled again with stiffening fingers, while forward the carpenter wrestled with a spare spar to raise anew a topmast. Both on deck and below Rafferty’s nimble tongue reached and drove the lagging crew.