Pearly light rises in the north-east through the lessening drift, and another day has come.
CHAPTER IX MIDWINTER AND ITS WORK;
With the advent of the fateful Ides of March, winter ii had practically set in, and work outside had a chequered career. When a few calm hours intervened between two blizzards a general rush was made to continue some long-standing job. Often all that could be done was to clear the field for action, that is, dig away large accumulations of snow. Then the furies would break loose again, and once more we would play the waiting game, meanwhile concerning ourselves with more sedentary occupations.
There was a familiar cry when, for some meteorological reason, the wind would relapse into fierce gusts and then suddenly stop, to be succeeded by intense stillness. "Dead calm, up with the wireless masts!" Every one hastily dashed for his burberrys, and soon a crowd of muffled figures would emerge through the veranda exit, dragging ropes, blocks, picks, and shovels. There was no time to be lost.
So the erection of the wireless masts began in earnest on April 4, continued feverishly till the end of the month, suffered a long period of partial cessation during May and June, was revived in July and August, and, by September 1, two masts, each consisting of a lower-mast and top-mast, had been raised and stayed, while between them stretched the aerial. For four weeks messages were sent out, and many of them were caught by Macquarie Island. Nothing was heard in Adelie Land, although, between certain hours, regular watches were kept at the receiver. The aerial was about sixty-five feet from the ground, and it was resolved to increase its height by erecting the top-gallant masts; but before anything considerable could be done, a terrific gust of wind on October 13 broke three wire-stays, and down came the mast, broken and splintered by the fall. That is a brief resume of the fortunes of the "wireless" during the first year.
During February and March there were various other operations of more immediate importance which prevented concentration of our workers on the erection of the masts. There were many odd jobs to finish about the Hut, the Magnetograph House and Absolute Hut were "under way," the air-tractor sledge had to be efficiently housed, and all these and many other things could be done in weather during which it was out of question to hoist a mast into position. At first we were fastidious and waited for a calm, but later, as we grew more impatient, a top-mast was actually hauled up in a wind of thirty miles per hour, with gusts of higher velocity. Such work would sometimes be interrupted by a more furious outbreak, when all ropes would be secured and everything made as ship-shape as possible.
On March 15 the following note was made: "The wind was on the cool side just after breakfast. A few loads of wireless equipment were sledged up to the rocks at the back of the Hut, and by the time several masts were carried to the same place we began to warm to the work. One of Hannam's coils of frozen rope (one hundred and twenty fathoms) had become kinked and tangled, so we dragged it up the ice-slope, straightened it out and coiled it up again. Several 'dead men' to hold the stays were sunk into ice-holes, and, during the afternoon, one mast was dragged into position by a willing crowd. Rocks were sledged to and packed around the 'dead men' in the holes to make them compact. Towards sundown snow clouds filled the northern sky and a blizzard sprang up which is now doing sixty miles per hour. We philosophically expect another week cooped up in the Hut."
It took a long time to establish the twenty good anchorages necessary for the masts. Within a radius of eighty yards from the centre, ice-holes were dug, cairns of heavy boulders were built and rocky prominences dynamited off to secure an efficient holding for the stout "strops" of rope. April 24 was a typical day: "We spent the morning fixing up 'strops' for the wireless masts. The wind was blowing strongly in fifty- to sixty-mile gusts with drift, but most of the fellows 'stuck at it' all day. It was cold work on the hands and feet. Handling picks and shovels predisposes to frost-bite. Several charges of dynamite were fired in one hole wherein a mast will be stepped."
Each mast, of oregon timber, was in four sections. The lowest section was ten inches square and tapered upwards to the small royal mast at a prospective height of one hundred and twenty feet. At an early stage it was realized that we could not expect to erect more than three sections. Round the steel caps at each doubling a good deal of fitting had to be done, and Bickerton, in such occupation, spent many hours aloft throughout the year. Fumbling with bulky mitts, handling hammers and spanners, and manipulating nuts and bolts with bare hands, while suspended in a boatswain's chair in the wind, the man up the mast had a difficult and miserable task. Bickerton was the hero of all such endeavours. Hannam directed the other workers who steadied the stays, cleared or made fast the ropes, pulled and stood by the hauling tackle and so forth.