Beyond the Great South Wall: The Secret of the Antarctic

by Frank Savile

I called Waller to me before the others came on deck, and we held consultation on our future movements. Our observations of the previous day had pretty well determined us that no means of launching a boat along the shores of the western cliffs was to be found. The terrible toil that would be involved in getting the sections of the launch across the rocky crevices of the moraine had decided us that we must look eastward if we wanted to find a beach to launch from before the winter closed down upon us and shut the surrounding waters with closest barriers of ice. Eastward we therefore would make our day’s quest.

Before we left I made time to investigate the cavern that opened down beneath our keel. I got a rope and fastened it to the bowsprit, and taking a turn of it round my elbow, lit a dip and crawled carefully down the sloping sides of the pit. The slant was steep, but there were numerous ledges and footholds, and about six feet below the surface a recess was hollowed out in the sides of the split, evidently caused by some lump of granite shivering off during the upheaval, and dropping further down into the fissure.

In this the damp of the receding waters still glistened, and lay in pools upon the floor. There was a bright, new riven appearance about the walls, showing that the strata-slip was recent. Bits of mica and other minerals, as yet undulled by exposure to the atmosphere, made this very plain. The huge cleft continued down in a thin well from the larger rent at the surface, losing itself in a darkness which might well be unplumbable. I could see one or two lumps of stone still sticking in the jaws of the gap—evidently remains of what had slipped down from the cavern in which I stood. Beyond these was emptiness. Though my eyes found nothing in this void, my nose was assailed by a smell of sulphur as strong as the after-blow of a blasting fuse.

I crept out again into the air, my throat very sore from the fumes that kept rising from below. I called the carpenter and one or two of the men, and set them to hack steps in the rock as far as the recess below, and directed them to cover the continuance of the fissure with planks. We unearthed a spare rudder-chain, and trailed it from a stanchion driven into the rocks. Thus we had a moderately easy passage into the chamber below, which could be used by the company at large if the Horror of the cañon attempted to attack them. So, with minds comparatively at ease, Garlicke, Gerry and I set forth to carry our exploration eastward across the glacier, leaving poor little Lessaution behind us, a melancholy object indeed, because his wounded shoulder prevented his joining us in our researches.

The eastern shore ran along the glacier edge for about a mile, gradually narrowing and mounting upward with an easy gradient. Finally the rock disappeared under the encroaching ice, and the glacier fronted on the cliff head. The chance of a landing-place between us and this point was plainly out of the question. Our plan was to surmount the glacier itself and explore the country beyond. Provided the going was not too rough or too broken by crevasses, it might be quite possible to convey the sections of our launch across it to any landing-place we might discover on the far side.

So, armed with ice-axes, we three set out as a small advance party, meaning only to go a day’s journey and then return with our report. For if no chance of a beach was likely within a reasonable distance, we should waste no more time in expeditions, but set ourselves to lower the boat down the cliffs as best we could.

All three of us have knocked about the Alps a bit. Therefore we managed our crawlings about the blue crevasses with a certain amount of ease, nor did the occasional dropping-in of an ice bridge occasion us great excitement. We were roped of course, and moved with steadiness, but after a bit found that our mountaineering muscles were not in the best of condition. Nor had we reckoned on the heat of the mid-day sun or its effect when reflected back from these glassy surfaces.

After about two hours of heavy going and copious perspiration our skins began to fray most painfully, and our faces were the hue of rosy-fingered dawn. Gerry’s expressive features were literally hanging in rags, and Garlicke and I, tougher-hided animals though we were, saw the rocks that bordered the far side of the ice-field with no small gratitude.

We left the ice and stepped out on to the narrow margin of rock that flanked it. A few paces forward we found that the crags sunk sheer from our feet. Below us, some twenty fathoms or more, a still, black pool laved their base, rippleless as a Lethean lake. At the seaward end it was broken by rocks, piled and tumbled as if tossed there by some great convulsion. It was not hard to understand how this inland sea-pool had come into being.

Originally it had been a bay or inlet with a narrow, land-locked entrance. Some upheaval—volcanic, no doubt—had shut down the guarding cliffs upon the opening as a curtain falls across a stage. The huge splinters, piled as they were across the narrows of this fiord, could scarcely be distinguished from the cliffs off which they had been rent.