Into the Frozen South

by J. W. S. Marr

CHAPTER XIII
Going Doggedly On

Commander Wild decided to get clear of the pack altogether and work to the westward before again attempting to make for the land, and consequently he held on the northerly course, through close but broken ice. I had the wheel at 4 a.m., after he came to this decision, and as the steering was nothing to worry about, I found myself with time on my hands to study the trifling happenings that went on around the ship; and it is the trifles that make for interest during a sojourn in solitudes. So that I found a lot of enjoyment in watching the manœuvres of a sea-leopard, who kept shoving his big ugly head up above water some little distance away. He differed from ordinary seals in the respect that he refused to come near to the ship. Every now and then it was as though his curiosity got the upper hand. He stared at the Quest with an expression that was laughably suggestive of a taxi-driver estimating the tip-giving possibilities of a fare; but discretion was his strongest feature, and after a long survey he invariably turned up his nose at us, gave a flick of his tail and dived again.

The Quest was leaking badly again, by reason of the savage bumping she had endured in her struggles through the pack, and the order of the day was: Hands to the pumps! Some of us pathetically declared that we had pumped the entire Antarctic Ocean out of our bilges, and that in a little while we should be aground for sheer lack of water; but much as we pumped there was always more water trickling in; for exercise, indeed, we lacked nothing. When day came the clear sky was gone, a dull grey and brooding had given place to the brilliant colouring, and the breeze was cold and biting. We thought longingly of our Polar clothing lying uselessly in store at Cape Town, whence we had been unable to retrieve it, and, biting on the bullet, made the best of it.

There was plenty of variety that day. Our course alternated between steady steaming through wide-open lanes and dogged thrusting through close pack-ice, whilst during the official hours of night a lot of snow fell; and, to remind us that the Quest was a mobile entity, a moderate but growing swell began to tempt her into a fresh display of her aquatic gymnastics.

For the next twenty-four hours or so we continued along similar lines. Open water in stretches, loose pack alternating, and a lot of snow falling; there you have the conditions. But the increasing predominance of water showed us that we were approaching open sea; so, too, did the growing swell. A sounding of 2,340 fathoms showed us that we were leaving the land behind us, and an increasing temperature backed the idea; but though the thermometer registered 34° F. we found the cold much more biting and penetrating, by reason of the raw-edged wind that was blowing stirring up the marrow in our bones and setting the teeth a-chatter. Killer whales and seals provided plenty of local colour, and I was much interested in watching one seal that was perched on a lonely floe far too small for it. It was like a very fat woman in a very small donkey-chaise, and I wondered what would happen when the floe capsized.

After a while we ran alongside the ice and moored the ship to a big, hummocky floe. What this was for I did not immediately understand, for the seniors of the ship did not go about the decks shouting their intentions to all hands; and though I felt myself an integral part of the expedition, I was not in the leader’s confidence at every moment of the day. No doubt if I’d been a hero of fiction the commander of the expedition would have left the running of the show to me, and welcomed my advice; but this being real life I kept in the background and did as I was told. Then I learnt by chance that we were about to water ship. It seemed to me that ice congealed from salt water was about the last substance in the world out of which to make fresh water; but I was told that in the process of freezing much of the salt in sea-water is precipitated, and that the upper portions of the floes at least are always quite fresh.

Several of the hands went out on the ice with pickaxes and commenced to chip off the tops of the hummocks. Others carried the resultant blocks to the edge of the floe and hove them to waiting hands on deck, who stowed them in a huge heap on the poop. By stretching the imagination during this operation it was possible to conceive oneself a millionaire potentially. Ice in a tropical city was worth so much a pound. We had ice, lots of it—continents of it. If only the ice could be transported and retailed, the treasures of the Indies would have seemed like chicken-feed by comparison, and Jules Verne could quite easily have managed the trifling task of efficient transportation. However, he was not aboard. So we remained poor.

Melted down, this ice-water proved quite palatable; a great improvement, indeed, on the stale water, much churned about by long rolling, in our tanks.

With a sufficient store of ice aboard we cast off from the floe and proceeded, until we ran clear of the pack altogether; and then Commander Wild, realizing how rapidly our fuel was diminishing, and knowing how many hundreds of miles of icy wastes we still had to penetrate—with no coaling stations nearer than a few thousand miles—ordered the engines to be stopped and sail to be made. At 6 p.m. we were well clear of ice and bowling along at a vigorous pace to the N.W., with a stiff, uncommonly chilly wind astern.

At three o’clock in the morning, cold, raw and dark, all hands were roused out to wear ship. I doubt if I shall ever forget those bitter bleak mornings. To turn out of a snug, if narrow bunk, half-awake, with the dregs of sleep still clinging to sticky eyelids and parched palates, to be required to heave and haul at cold, frozen ropes, with water swishing weirdly above your knees and slapping its feathers of spray into your face—ugh! To grope for a stray coil of iron-hard rope in two feet of water, and, just as you were gripping it, to have the heel of some shipmate’s sea-boot come down on your fingers excruciatingly—ugh—ugh! To feel the raw wind biting through to the core of your dismal soul; to hear the hurl and rush of water against your oilskins; to steady to the ship’s wild plunging—who’d sell a farm and go to sea! But the job had to be done; the welfare of the ship demanded that every man should do his best and bite off his natural growls ere they were definitely enunciated, lest growl begot louder and bitterer growl; so the job was worried through. By the manœuvre of wearing, the ship—not quick in stays by reason of her propeller—was turned to face the pack-ice again, and by nine o’clock at night we were again in the stream-ice, with a heavy swell running, the ship improving on her previous liveliness and thick snow falling. Peggying was actually a welcome task, because it occupied the mind and kept one below.