Хэммонд Иннес - Calling the Southern Cross!

Finally, there were none of the smooth miles of snow to be found on the Ross Barrier or the high land in toward the South Pole. The area across which we were trekking was the area through which our own iceberg had smashed its way, leaving chaos in its wake — an area of jumbled, broken, jagged ice in which every step forward was a struggle. The skis were useless. We trekked on foot, one of the party path-finding, the two others dragging the sledge.

In four days, trekking fourteen hours a day, we made about thirty miles. It doesn’t sound like much, but though the weather was good, the going was incredibly bad. Also, of course, we were weak after our long period of malnutrition, exposure and inactivity. I doubt whether we would have made thirty miles in four days if we hadn’t been following Bland’s sledge.

It was strange about those sledge tracks. At first, we had regarded Bland as the enemy, something to be beaten in addition to the ice. We’d no gun. If we caught up with Bland he could kill us if he wanted to, and if there was any chance of reaching the Southern Cross survivors or being rescued by the search ships, I knew that that was what he would do, just as he would have to get rid of his two companions. And yet, though we never actually mentioned it, I’m certain none of us, after the first few days, would have thought of turning aside from the tracks and striking out on our own. Soon we were following them blindly, not caring where they led, buoyed up by the constant hope that somewhere ahead of us, around the next ice hillock, over the next limit of our horizon, they would connect us with the outside world.

On the fourth day, Gerda began to show signs of weakening. Kalstad was limping from a swollen ankle and I was beginning to feel a stabbing pain in my chest. We made little more than two miles that day, the snow having softened, with the result that we sank through the honeycombed ice. Up to that time, I think we had been going faster than Bland, for early that morning we had passed his fourth camp site. It makes a lot of difference, in the conditions we were experiencing, if someone has blazed the trail for you.

Next day Gerda was weaker. She showed signs of dysentery. Kalstad and I were also suffering from diarrhea and beginning to weaken. Also the constant glare without sun goggles was inflaming our eyes, so that it was difficult to see. The snow held up crisp that day and we pressed on fast, using up in a savage effort the last reserves of energy. It was the first day of really good going and we had to take advantage of it.

By midday I think we had made as much as ten or eleven miles. After eating a biscuit and two pieces of sugar each, we pushed on. The sun became a pale disk shining wanly through a curtain of mist. The air became colder and the world we moved through lost its color. It was less painful to the eyes, but it was also less friendly. I think we must have gone on to the limit of endurance. And then suddenly we knew we could go no farther and we pitched camp.

In the stillness of early evening I thought I heard voices. Imagination plays hellish tricks. That night as we lay in the tent, Gerda whispered, “Duncan, it is no good. You must leave me behind.”

I remember experiencing a terrible sense of shock. I hadn’t realized how near the limit of endurance the day’s trek had brought her. I remember I shook my head angrily. “We’ll go on together,” I said.

She caught hold of my arm. “Please,” she whispered. Her voice, though weak, was urgent. “It was selfish of me to come. I should have known I have not a man’s strength. It is your duty to go on without me. I shall hinder you, and always you must think of all those peoples on the iceberg.”

“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” I said. And I got close against her, so that if she moved I should know. I was afraid she might walk out into the snow.

Sometime in the night the wind rose and by morning it was blowing a blizzard. I looked out of a comer of the tent into a gray, swirling void. Then I turned quickly to see if Gerda was still there. She was, thank God, for we could not move, and the enforced rest might enable her to make another day’s march.

For three days the blizzard continued, and in those three days we finished all our food with the exception of five biscuits and fifteen lumps of sugar. The tent was in perpetual darkness. It was like being buried alive.

The night it stopped snowing we smoked our last cigarette. In the gray light of morning I wrote in my log:

There is now no hope and no reason to go on. The others. I think, realize this now. I shall not abandon Gerda. There is no point.

We made an early start, wishing to take full advantage of what little energy we had been able to store up by lying still. The snow was feet deep. I made Gerda put on the skis. The snow was crisp and fairly firm, and we moved off with a feeling almost of cheerfulness. And around the first snow hillock we came upon the trampled snow of a camp. It had been evacuated that morning, for, beyond the camp, sledge and ski tracks marked the new snow, stretching out ahead of us again and disappearing round a cornice of blue, snow-free ice.

“Bland?” Gerda asked as she stopped beside me.

I nodded. So I really had heard voices that night the blizzard started. It was incredible. For three days we’d been camped within a hundred yards of Bland and his party, and not known it.

“They’re probably not more than an hour ahead of us,” I said.

“What will happen when we catch them up?”

“I don’t know,” I answered her. “I don’t think it matters much.” I didn’t think there was much chance of our catching up with them. There were three of them to pull the sledge, and both Bland and Vaksdal were big men.

So we went on, following the sledge marks through the fresh snow. Kalstad and I pulled the sledge and Gerda kept up with us easily on the skis. For two or three hours we made good progress. But about midday the sun came through. The glare was frightful and soon the snow began to soften and the going became harder as our boots broke through the surface crust. In some of the drifts we struggled forward through sifting snow that was well over our knees and had the consistency of rice grains. It took too much of our small reserve of energy and I made camp.

When darkness fell it was terribly cold and none of us slept very well. The cold seemed to eat into our undernourished bodies. Gerda suffered agonies of pain in her stomach and Kalstad complained of frostbite due to the fact that his boots, worn by the ice, were no longer watertight.

The next morning was cold and cheerless, with low clouds and a biting wind out of the south. We were late in starting. Gerda had no energy, no desire to move. When we did start, we made good progress, for the cold wind had frozen the thawed snow of the previous day into an ice-hard crust. Ahead of us Bland’s sledge tracks unwound steadily like a line meandering through the snow hills of the burned-up pack.

“Soon we kom to their camp, I think, ja?”

Kalstad was right. The snow hills gradually flattened out until finally we emerged into an almost flat desert of white where the pack had had time to settle before becoming frozen solid. And in this dead plain we saw the sledge tracks running straight, like parallel lines drawn by a ruler to a black patch.

“That is their camp!” Kalstad shouted to me. “And they are still there! I see some peoples moving!”

I could see a dark patch in the virgin white of the snow, a patch that danced and wavered. I don’t know why we pressed on so hard then. We didn’t really want to join up with Bland. It wouldn’t help us. And yet the mere thought of contact with other human beings in that grim waste of frozen snow spurred us forward.