As subsequent events turned out, Hussey received a message at Monte Video from Lady Shackleton expressing her wish that Sir Ernest should be buried in South Georgia, which was the scene of one of his greatest exploits, and which might well be described as the “Gateway of the Antarctic.” The coffin was returned to Gritviken by the Woodville, through the courtesy of Captain Least, and Sir Ernest was ultimately buried in the little cemetery beside our old “dog-lines.” Of his comrades, only Hussey was present at the funeral, for the rest of us had already sailed into the South, but there were many amongst the hardy whalers of South Georgia who attended, men who knew him and could, better than most people, appreciate his work. Nor was the sympathetic presence of a woman lacking, for at the funeral was Mrs. Aarberg, wife of the Norwegian doctor at Leith, who with kindly thought had placed upon his grave a wreath made from the only flowers on the island, those which she had cultivated with much care and patience inside her own house. She was the only woman on South Georgia.
I have not the least doubt that had Sir Ernest been able to decide upon his last resting-place, it is just here that he would have chosen to lie, and would have preferred this simple funeral to any procedure carried out with greater pomp and ceremony.
Not here! the white South has thy bones; and thou,
Heroic sailor-soul,
Art passing on thine happier voyage now
Toward no earthly Pole.[6]
CHAPTER V
PREPARATIONS IN SOUTH GEORGIA
We can make good all loss except
The loss of turning back.—Kipling.