some weeks ago. All these islands are of volcanic origin and black in
general colour, but I believe there is evidence to show that the lava
stream which created them flowed from McMurdo Sound rather than from the
more obvious craters of Erebus. Their importance in this story is the
indirect help they gave in holding in sea-ice against southerly
blizzards, and in forming landmarks which proved useful more than once to
men who had lost their bearings in darkness and thick weather. In this
respect also several icebergs which sailed in from the Ross Sea and
grounded on the shallows which run between Inaccessible Island and the
cape, as well as in South Bay, were most useful as well as being
interesting and beautiful. For two years we watched the weathering of
these great towers and bastions of ice by sea and sun and wind, and left
them still lying in the same positions, but mere tumbled ruins of their
former selves.

Many places in the panorama we have examined show black rock, and the
cape on which we stand exposes at times more black than white. This fact
always puzzles those who naturally conclude that all the Antarctic is
covered with ice and snow. The explanation is simple, that winds of the
great velocity which prevails in this region will not only prevent snow
resting to windward of out-cropping rocks and cliffs, but will even wear
away the rocks themselves. The fact that these winds always blow from the
south, or southerly, causes a tendency for this aspect of any projecting
rock to be blown free from snow, while the north or lee side is drifted
up by a marbled and extremely hard tongue of snow, which disappears into
a point at a distance which depends upon the size of the rock.

Of course for the most part the land is covered to such a depth by
glaciers and snow that no wind will do more than pack the snow or expose
the ice beneath. At the same time, to visualize the Antarctic as a white
land is a mistake, for, not only is there much rock projecting wherever
mountains or rocky capes and islands rise, but the snow seldom looks
white, and if carefully looked at will be found to be shaded with many
colours, but chiefly with cobalt blue or rose-madder, and all the
gradations of lilac and mauve which the mixture of these colours will
produce. A White Day is so rare that I have recollections of going out
from the hut or the tent and being impressed by the fact that the snow
really looked white. When to the beautiful tints in the sky and the
delicate shading on the snow are added perhaps the deep colours of the
open sea, with reflections from the ice foot and ice-cliffs in it, all
brilliant blues and emerald greens, then indeed a man may realize how
beautiful this world can be, and how clean.

Though I may struggle with inadequate expression to show the reader that
this pure Land of the South has many gifts to squander upon those who
woo her, chiefest of these gifts is that of her beauty. Next, perhaps, is
that of grandeur and immensity, of giant mountains and limitless spaces,
which must awe the most casual, and may well terrify the least
imaginative of mortals. And there is one other gift which she gives with
both hands, more prosaic, but almost more desirable. That is the gift of
sleep. Perhaps it is true of others as is certainly the case with me,
that the more horrible the conditions in which we sleep, the more
soothing and wonderful are the dreams which visit us. Some of us have
slept in a hurricane of wind and a hell of drifting snow and darkness,
with no roof above our heads, with no tent to help us home, with no
conceivable chance that we should ever see our friends again, with no
food that we could eat, and only the snow which drifted into our
sleeping-bags which we could drink day after day and night after night.
We slept not only soundly the greater part of these days and nights, but
with a certain numbed pleasure. We wanted something sweet to eat: for
preference tinned peaches in syrup! Well! That is the kind of sleep the
Antarctic offers you at her worst, or nearly at her worst. And if the
worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes
disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than as
a gruesome foe. She treats you thus when you are in the extremity of
peril and hardship; perhaps then you can imagine what draughts of deep
and healthy slumber she will give a tired sledger at the end of a long
day's march in summer, when after a nice hot supper he tucks his soft dry
warm furry bag round him with the light beating in through the green silk
tent, the homely smell of tobacco in the air, and the only noise that of
the ponies tethered outside, munching their supper in the sun.

And so it came about that during our sojourn at Cape Evans, in our
comfortable warm roomy home, we took our full allotted span of sleep.
Most were in their bunks by 10 P.M., sometimes with a candle and a book,
not rarely with a piece of chocolate. The acetylene was turned off at
10.30, for we had a limited quantity of carbide, and soon the room was
in complete darkness, save for the glow of the galley stove and where a
splash of light showed the night watchman preparing his supper. Some
snored loudly, but none so loud as Bowers; others talked in their sleep,
the more so when some nasty experience had lately set their nerves on
edge. There was always the ticking of many instruments, and sometimes the
ring of a little bell: to this day I do not know what most of them meant.
On a calm night no sound penetrated except, perhaps, the whine of a dog,
or the occasional kick of a pony in the stable outside. Any disturbance
was the night watchman's job. But on a bad blizzard night the wind, as it
tore seawards over the hut, roared and howled in the ventilator let into
the roof: in the more furious gusts the whole hut shook, and the pebbles
picked up by the hurricane scattered themselves noisily against the
woodwork of the southern wall. We did not get many nights like these the
first winter; during the second we seemed to get nothing else. One
ghastly blizzard blew for six weeks.

The night watchman took his last hourly observation at 7 A.M., and was
free to turn in after waking the cook and making up the fire. Frequently,
however, he had so much work to do that he preferred to forgo his sleep
and remain up. For instance, if the weather looked threatening, he would
take his pony out for exercise as soon as possible in the morning, or
those lists of stores were not finished, or that fish trap had to be
looked after: all kinds of things.

A sizzling on the fire and a smell of porridge and fried seal liver
heralded breakfast, which was at 8 A.M. in theory and a good deal later
in practice. A sleepy eye might see the meteorologist stumping out
(Simpson always stumped) to change the records in his magnetic cave and
visit his instruments on the Hill. Twenty minutes later he would be back,
as often as not covered with drift and his wind helmet all iced up.
Meanwhile, the more hardy ones were washing: that is, they rubbed
themselves, all shivering, with snow, of a minus temperature, and
pretended they liked it. Perhaps they were right, but we told them it was
swank. I'm not sure that it wasn't! It should be explained that water
was seldom possible in a land where ice is more abundant than coal.

One great danger threatened all our meals in this hut, namely that of a
Cag. A Cag is an argument, sometimes well informed and always heated,
upon any subject under the sun, or temporarily in our case, the moon.
They ranged from the Pole to the Equator, from the Barrier to Portsmouth
Hard and Plymouth Hoe. They began on the smallest of excuses, they
continued through the widest field, they never ended; they were left in
mid air, perhaps to be caught up again and twisted and tortured months
after. What caused the cones on the Ramp; the formation of ice crystals;
the names and order of the public-houses if you left the Main Gate of
Portsmouth Dockyard and walked to the Unicorn Gate (if you ever reached
so far); the best kinds of crampons in the Antarctic, and the best place
in London for oysters; the ideal pony rug; would the wine steward at the
Ritz look surprised if you asked him for a pint of bitter? Though the
Times Atlas does not rise to public-houses nor Chambers's Encyclopaedia
sink to behaviour at our more expensive hotels, yet they settled more of
these disputes than anything else.

On the day we are discussing, though mutterings can still be heard from
Nelson's cubicle, the long table has been cleared and every one is busy
by 9.30. From now until supper at 7 work is done by all in some form or
other, except for a short luncheon interval. I do not mean for a minute
that we all sit down, as a man may do in an office at home, and solidly
grind away for upwards of nine hours or more. Not a bit of it. We have
much work out of doors, and exercise is a consideration of the utmost
importance. But when we go out, each individual quite naturally takes the
opportunity to carry out such work as concerns him, whether it deals with
ice or rocks, dogs or horses, meteorology or biology, tide-gauges or
balloons.

When blizzards allowed, the ponies were exercised by their respective
leaders between breakfast and mid-day, when they were fed. This
exercising of animals might be a pleasant business, on the other hand it
could be the deuce and all: it depended on the pony and the weather. A
blubber fire was kept burning in the snug stable, which was built against
the lee wall of the hut: the ponies were, therefore, quite warm, and
found it chilly directly they were led outside, even if there was no
wind.

The difficulties of exercising them in the dark were so great that with
the best intentions in the world it was difficult to give them sufficient
work for the good feeding they received. Add to this the fact that one at
any rate of these variable animals was really savage, and that most of
them were keen to break away if possible, and the hour of exercise was
not without its thrills even on the calmest and most moonlight days. The
worst days were those when it was difficult to say whether the ponies
should be taken out on the sea-ice or not. It was thick weather that was
to be feared, for then, if the leader once lost his bearings, it was most
difficult for him to return. An overcast sky, light falling snow, perhaps
a light northerly wind generally meant a blizzard, but the blizzard might
not break for twenty-four hours, it might be upon you in four seconds. It
was difficult to say whether the pony should miss his exercise, whether
the fish trap should be raised, whether to put off your intended trip to
Cape Royds. Generally the risks were taken, for, on the whole, it is
better to be a little over-bold than a little over-cautious, while always
there was a something inside urging you to do it just because there was a
certain risk, and you hardly liked not to do it. It is so easy to be
afraid of being afraid!

Let me give one instance: it must be typical of many. It was thick as it
could be, no moon, no stars, light falling snow, and not even a light
breeze to keep in your face to give direction. Bowers and I decided to
take our ponies out, and once over the tide crack, where the working
sea-ice joins the fast land-ice, we kept close under the tall cliffs of
the Barne Glacier. So far all was well, and also when we struck along a
small crack into the middle of the bay, where there was a thermometer
screen. This we read with some difficulty by the light of a match and
started back towards the hut. In about a quarter of an hour we knew we
were quite lost until an iceberg which we recognized showed us that we
had been walking at right angles to our course, and got us safe home.

On a clear crisp day, with the full moon to show you the ridges and
cracks and sastrugi, it was most pleasant to put on your ski and wander
forth with no object but that of healthy pleasure. Perhaps you would make
your way round the bluff end of the cape and strike southwards. Here you
may visit Nelson working with his thermometers and current meters and
other instruments over a circular hole in the ice, which he keeps open
from day to day by breaking out the 'biscuit' of newly formed ice. He has
connected himself with the hut by telephone, and built round himself an
igloo of drifted snow and the aforesaid 'biscuits,' which effectually
shelter him from the wind. Or you may meet Meares and Dimitri returning
with the dog-teams from a visit to Hut Point. A little farther on the
silence is complete. But now your ear catches the metallic scratch of ski
sticks on hard ice; there is some one else ski-ing over there, it may be
many miles away, for sound travels in an amazing way. Every now and then
there comes a sharp crack like a pistol shot; it is the ice contracting
in the glaciers of Erebus, and you know that it is getting colder. Your
breath smokes, forming white rime over your face, and ice in your beard;
if it is very cold you may actually hear it crackle as it freezes in mid
air!

These were the days which remain visibly in the mind as the most
enjoyable during this first winter season. It was all so novel, these
much-dreaded, and amongst us much-derided, terrors of the Long Winter
Night. The atmosphere is very clear when it is not filled with snow or
ice crystals, and the moonlight lay upon the land so that we could see
the main outlines of the Hut Point Peninsula, and even Minna Bluff out on
the Barrier ninety miles away. The ice-cliffs of Erebus showed as great
dark walls, but above them the blue ice of the glaciers gleamed silvery,
and the steam flowed lazily from the crater carried away in a long line,
showing us that the northerly breezes prevailed up there, and were
storing up trouble in the south. Sometimes a shooting star would seem to
fall right into the mountain, and for the most part the Aurora flitted
uneasily about in the sky.

The importance of plenty of out-door exercise was generally recognized,
and our experience showed us that the happiest and healthiest members of
our party during this first year were those who spent the longest period
in the fresh air. As a rule we walked and worked and ski-ed alone, not I
feel sure because of any individual distaste for the company of our
fellows but rather because of a general inclination to spend a short
period of the day without company. At least this is certainly true of the
officers: I am not so sure about the men. Under the circumstances, the
only time in the year that a man could be alone was in his walks abroad
from Winter Quarters, for the hut, of course, was always occupied, and
when sledging this sardine-like existence was continuous night and day.

There was one regular exception to this rule. Every possible evening,
that is to say if it was not blowing a full blizzard, Wilson and Bowers
went up the Ramp together 'to read Bertram.' Now this phrase will convey
little meaning without some explanation. I have already spoken of the
Ramp as the steep rubbly slope partly covered by snow and partly by ice
which divided the cape on which we lived from the glaciated slopes of
Erebus. After a breathless scramble up this embankment one came upon a
belt of rough boulder-strewn ground from which arose at intervals conical
mounds, the origin of which puzzled us for many months. At length, by the
obvious means of cutting a section through one of them, it was proved
that there was a solid kenyte lava block in the centre of this cone,
proving that the whole was formed by the weathering of a single rock.
Threading your way for some hundreds of yards through this terrain, a
scramble attended by many slips and falls on a dark night, you reached
the first signs of glaciation. A little farther, isolated in the ice
stream, is another group of debris cones, and on the largest of these we
placed meteorological Screen "B," commonly called Bertram. This screen,
together with "A" (Algernon) and "C" (Clarence), which were in North and
South Bays respectively, were erected by Bowers, who thought, rightly,
that they would form an object to which men could guide their walks, and
that at the same time the observations of maximum, minimum and present
temperatures would be a useful check to the meteorologist when he came to
compare them with those taken at the hut. As a matter of fact the book in
which we used to enter these observations shows that the air temperatures
out on the sea-ice vary considerably from those on the cape, and that the
temperatures several hundred feet up on the slopes of Erebus are often
several degrees higher than those taken at sea-level. I believe that much
of the weather in this part of the world is an intensely local affair,
and these screens produced useful data.

Wilson and Bowers would go up the Ramp when it was blowing and drifting
fairly hard, so that although the rocks and landmarks immediately round
them were visible, all beyond was blotted out. It is quite possible to
walk thus among landmarks which you know at a time when it is most unwise
to go out on to the sea-ice where there are no fixed points to act as a
guide.

It was Wilson's pleasant conceit to keep his balaclava rolled up, so that
his face was bare, on such occasions, being somewhat proud of the fact
that he had not, as yet, been frost-bitten. Imagine our joy when he
entered the hut one cold windy evening with two white spots on his cheeks
which he vainly tried to hide behind his dogskin mitts.

[Illustration: MCMURDO SOUND--Apsley Cherry-Garrard, del.--Emery Walker
Ltd., Collotypers.]

The ponies' lunch came at mid-day, when they were given snow to drink and
compressed fodder with oats or oil-cake on alternate days to eat, the
proportion of which was arranged according to the work they were able to
do in the present, or expected to do in the future. Our own lunch was
soon after one, and a few minutes before that time Hooper's voice would
be heard: "Table please, Mr. Debenham," and all writing materials,
charts, instruments and books would have to be removed. On Sunday, this
table displayed a dark blue cloth, but for meals and at all other times
it was covered with white oilcloth.

Lunch itself was a pleasant meatless meal, consisting of limited bread
and butter with plenty of jam or cheese, tea or cocoa, the latter being
undoubtedly a most useful drink in a cold country. Many controversies
raged over the rival merits of tea and cocoa. Some of us made for
ourselves buttered toast at the galley fire; I must myself confess to a
weakness for Welsh Rarebit, and others followed my example on cheese days
in making messes of which we were not a little proud. Scott sat at the
head of the table, that is at the east end, but otherwise we all took our
places haphazard from meal to meal as our conversation, or want of it,
merited, or as our arrival found a vacant chair. Thus if you felt
talkative you might always find a listener in Debenham; if inclined to
listen yourself it was only necessary to sit near Taylor or Nelson; if,
on the other hand, you just wanted to be quiet, Atkinson or Oates would,
probably, give you a congenial atmosphere.

There was never any want of conversation, largely due to the fact that no
conversation was expected: we most of us know the horrible blankness
which comes over our minds when we realize that because we are eating we
are also supposed to talk, whether we have anything to say or not. It was
also due to the more primitive reason that in a company of specialists,
whose travels extended over most parts of the earth, and whose subjects
overlapped and interlocked at so many points, topics of conversation were
not only numerous but full of possibilities of expansion. Add to this
that from the nature of our work we were probably people of an
inquisitive turn of mind and wanted to get to the bottom of the subjects
which presented themselves, and you may expect to find, as was in fact
the case, an atmosphere of pleasant and quite interesting conversation
which sometimes degenerated into heated and noisy argument.

The business of eating over, pipes were lit without further formality. I
mention pipes only because while we had a most bountiful supply of
tobacco, the kindly present of Mr. Wills, our supply of cigarettes from
the same source was purposely limited and only a small quantity were
landed, allowing of a ration to such members who wished. Consequently
cigarettes were an article of some value, and in a land where the
ordinary forms of currency are valueless they became a frequent stake to
venture when making bets. Indeed, "I bet you ten cigarettes," or "I bet
you a dinner when we get back to London," became the most frequent bids
of the argumentative gambler, occasionally varied when the bettor was
more than usually certain of the issue by the offer of a pair of socks.

By two o'clock we were dispersed once more to our various works and
duties. If it was bearable outside, the hut would soon be empty save for
the cook and a couple of seamen washing up the plates; otherwise every
one went out to make the most of any glimmering of daylight which still
came to us from the sun below the northern horizon. And here it may be
explained that whereas in England the sun rises more or less in the east,
is due south at mid-day, and sets in the west, this is not the case in
the Antarctic regions. In the latitude in which we now lived the sun is
at his highest at mid-day in the north, at his lowest at midnight in the
south. As is generally known he remains entirely above the horizon for
four months of the summer (October-February) and entirely below the
horizon for four months in the winter (April 21-August 21). About
February 27, the end of summer, he begins to set and rise due south at
midnight; the next day he sets a little earlier and dips a little deeper.
During March and April he is going deeper and deeper every day, until, by
the middle of April, he is set all the time except for just a peep over
the northern horizon at mid-day, which is his last farewell before he
goes away.

The reverse process takes place from August 21 onwards. On this date the
sun just peeped above the sea to the north of our hut. The next day he
rose a little higher and longer, and in a few weeks he was rising well in
the east and sinking behind the Western Mountains. But he did not stop
there. Soon he was rising in the S.E. until in the latter days of
September he never rose, for he never set; but circled round us by day
and night. On Midsummer Day (December 21) at the South Pole the sun
circles round for twenty-four hours without changing his altitude for one
minute of a degree, but elsewhere he is always rising in the sky until
mid-day in the north and falling from that time until midnight in the
south.

Often, far too often, it was blizzing, and it was impossible to go out
except into the camp to take the observations, to care for the dogs, to
get ice for water or to bring in stores. Even a short excursion of a few
yards had to be made with great care under such circumstances, and
certainly no one went outside more than was necessary, if only because
one was obliged to dig the accumulated drift from the door before it was
possible to proceed. Blizzard or no blizzard, most men were back in the
hut soon after four, and from then until 6.30 worked steadily at their
jobs. As supper time approached some kindly-disposed person would sit
down and play on the Broadwood pianola which was one of our blessings,
and so it was that we came to supper with good tempers as well as keen
appetites.

Soup, in which the flavour of tomatoes occurred all too frequently,
followed by seal or penguin, and twice a week by New Zealand mutton, with
tinned vegetables, formed the basis of our meal, and this was followed by
a pudding. We drank lime juice and water which sometimes included a
suspicious penguin flavour derived from the ice slopes from which our
water was quarried.

During our passage out to New Zealand in the ship (or as Meares always
insisted on calling her, the steamer) it was our pleasant custom to have
a glass of port or a liqueur after dinner. Alas, we had this no longer:
after leaving New Zealand space allowed of little wine being carried in
the Terra Nova, even if the general medical opinion of the expedition had
not considered its presence undesirable. We had, however, a few cases for
special festivals, as well as some excellent liqueur brandy which was
carried as medical comforts on our sledge journeys. Any officer who
allowed the distribution of this luxury on nearing the end of a journey
became extremely popular.

Lack of wine probably led to the suspension of a custom which had
prevailed on the Terra Nova, namely, the drinking of the old toast of
Saturday night, "Sweethearts and wives; may our sweethearts become our
wives, and our wives remain our sweethearts," and that more appropriate
(in our case) toast of Sunday, namely, "absent friends." We had but few
married officers, though I must say most survivors of the expedition
hurried to remedy this single state of affairs when they returned to
civilization. Only two of them are unmarried now. Most of them will
probably make a success of it, for the good Arctic explorer has most of
the defects and qualities of a good husband.

On the top of the pianola, close to the head of the table, lived the
gramophone; and under the one looking-glass we possessed, which hung on
the bulkhead of Scott's cubicle, was a home-made box with shelves on
which lay our records. It was usual to start the gramophone after dinner,
and its value may be imagined. It is necessary to be cut off from
civilization and all that it means to enable you to realize fully the
power music has to recall the past, or the depths of meaning in it to
soothe the present and give hope for the future. We had also records of
good classical music, and the kindly-disposed individual who played them
had his reward in the pleasant atmosphere of homeliness which made itself
felt. After dinner had been cleared away, some men sat on at the table
occupied with books and games. Others dispersed to various jobs. In the
matter of games it was noticeable that one would have its vogue and yield
place to another without any apparent reason. For a few weeks it might be
chess, which would then yield its place to draughts and backgammon, and
again come into favour. It is a remarkable fact that, though we had
playing cards with us none of our company appeared desirous to use them.
In fact I cannot remember seeing a game of cards played except in the
ship on the voyage from England.

[Illustration: THE SEA'S FRINGE OF ICE]

With regard to books we were moderately well provided with good modern
fiction, and very well provided with such authors as Thackeray, Charlotte
Bronte, Bulwer-Lytton and Dickens. With all respect to the kind givers
of these books, I would suggest that the literature most acceptable to
us in the circumstances under which we did most of our reading, that is
in Winter Quarters, was the best of the more recent novels, such as
Barrie, Kipling, Merriman and Maurice Hewlett. We certainly should have
taken with us as much of Shaw, Barker, Ibsen and Wells as we could lay
our hands on, for the train of ideas started by these works and the
discussions to which they would have given rise would have been a godsend
to us in our isolated circumstances. The one type of book in which we
were rich was Arctic and Antarctic travel. We had a library of these
given to us by Sir Lewis Beaumont and Sir Albert Markham which was very
complete. They were extremely popular, though it is probably true that
these are books which you want rather to read on your return than when
you are actually experiencing a similar life. They were used extensively
in discussions or lectures on such polar subjects as clothing, food
rations, and the building of igloos, while we were constantly referring
to them on specific points and getting useful hints, such as the use of
an inner lining to our tents, and the mechanism of a blubber stove.

I have already spoken of the importance of maps and books of reference,
and these should include a good encyclopaedia and dictionaries, English,
Latin and Greek. Oates was generally deep in Napier's History of the
Peninsular War, and some of us found Herbert Paul's History of Modern
England a great stand-by. Most of us managed to find room in our personal
gear when sledging for some book which did not weigh much and yet would
last. Scott took some Browning on the Polar Journey, though I only saw
him reading it once; Wilson took Maud and In Memoriam; Bowers always had
so many weights to tally and observations to record on reaching camp that
I feel sure he took no reading matter. Bleak House was the most
successful book I ever took away sledging, though a volume of poetry was
useful, because it gave one something to learn by heart and repeat during
the blank hours of the daily march, when the idle mind is all too apt to
think of food in times of hunger, or possibly of purely imaginary
grievances, which may become distorted into real foundations of discord
under the abnormal strain of living for months in the unrelieved company
of three other men. If your companions have much the same tastes as
yourself it is best to pool your allowance of weights and take one book
which will offer a wide field of thought and discussion. I have heard
Scott and Wilson bless the thought which led them to take Darwin's Origin
of Species on their first Southern Journey. Such is the object of your
sledging book, but you often want the book which you read for half an
hour before you go to sleep at Winter Quarters to take you into the
frivolous fripperies of modern social life which you may not know and may
never wish to know, but which it is often pleasant to read about, and
never so much so as when its charms are so remote as to be entirely
tantalizing.

Scott, who always amazed me by the amount of work he got through without
any apparent effort, was essentially the driving force of the expedition:
in the hut quietly organizing, working out masses of figures, taking the
greatest interest in the scientific work of the station, and perhaps
turning out, quite by the way, an elaborate paper on an abstruse problem
in the neighbourhood; fond of his pipe and a good book, Browning, Hardy
(Tess was one of his favourites), Galsworthy. Barrie was one of his
greatest friends.

He was eager to accept suggestions if they were workable, and always keen
to sift even the most unlikely theories if by any means they could be
shaped to the desired end: a quick and modern brain which he applied with
thoroughness to any question of practice or theory. Essentially an
attractive personality, with strong likes and dislikes, he excelled in
making his followers his friends by a few words of sympathy or praise: I
have never known anybody, man or woman, who could be so attractive when
he chose.

Sledging he went harder than any man of whom I have ever heard. Men never
realized Scott until they had gone sledging with him. On our way up the
Beardmore Glacier we were going at top pressure some seventeen hours out
of the twenty-four, and when we turned out in the morning we felt as
though we had only just turned in. By lunch time we felt that it was
impossible to get through in the afternoon a similar amount of work to
that which we had done in the morning. A cup of tea and two biscuits
worked wonders, and the first two hours of the afternoon's march went
pretty well, indeed they were the best hours' marching of the day; but by
the time we had been going some 41/2 or 5 hours we were watching Scott for
that glance to right and left which betokened the search for a good
camping site. "Spell oh!" Scott would cry, and then "How's the enemy,
Titus?" to Oates, who would hopefully reply that it was, say, seven
o'clock. "Oh, well, I think we'll go on a little bit more," Scott would
say. "Come along!" It might be an hour or more before we halted and made
our camp: sometimes a blizzard had its silver lining. Scott could not
wait. However welcome a blizzard could be to tired bodies (I speak only
of summer sledging), to Scott himself any delay was intolerable. And it
is hard to realize how difficult waiting may be to one in a responsible
position. It was our simple job to follow, to get up when we were roused,
to pull our hardest, to do our special work as thoroughly and quickly as
possible; it was Scott who had to organize distances and weights and
food, as well as do the same physical work as ourselves. In sledging
responsibility and physical work are combined to an extent seldom if ever
found elsewhere.

His was a subtle character, full of lights and shades.

England knows Scott as a hero; she has little idea of him as a man. He
was certainly the most dominating character in our not uninteresting
community: indeed, there is no doubt that he would carry weight in any
gathering of human beings. But few who knew him realized how shy and
reserved the man was, and it was partly for this reason that he so often
laid himself open to misunderstanding.

Add to this that he was sensitive, femininely sensitive, to a degree
which might be considered a fault, and it will be clear that leadership
to such a man may be almost a martyrdom, and that the confidence so
necessary between leader and followers, which must of necessity be based
upon mutual knowledge and trust, becomes in itself more difficult. It
wanted an understanding man to appreciate Scott quickly; to others
knowledge came with experience.

He was not a _very_ strong man physically, and was in his youth a weakly
child, at one time not expected to live. But he was well proportioned,
with broad shoulders and a good chest, a stronger man than Wilson, weaker
than Bowers or Seaman Evans. He suffered from indigestion, and told me at
the top of the Beardmore that he never expected to go on during the first
stage of the ascent.

Temperamentally he was a weak man, and might very easily have been an
irritable autocrat. As it was he had moods and depressions which might
last for weeks, and of these there is ample evidence in his diary. The
man with the nerves gets things done, but sometimes he has a terrible
time in doing them. He cried more easily than any man I have ever known.

What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over
and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together. It would
be stupid to say he had all the virtues: he had, for instance, little
sense of humour, and he was a bad judge of men. But you have only to read
one page of what he wrote towards the end to see something of his sense
of justice. For him justice was God. Indeed I think you must read all
those pages; and if you have read them once, you will probably read them
again. You will not need much imagination to see what manner of man he
was.

And notwithstanding the immense fits of depression which attacked him,
Scott was the strongest combination of a strong mind in a strong body
that I have ever known. And this because he was so weak! Naturally so
peevish, highly strung, irritable, depressed and moody. Practically such
a conquest of himself, such vitality, such push and determination, and
withal in himself such personal and magnetic charm. He was naturally an
idle man, he has told us so;[134] he had been a poor man, and he had a
horror of leaving those dependent upon him in difficulties. You may read
it over and over again in his last letters and messages.[135]

He will go down to history as the Englishman who conquered the South Pole
and who died as fine a death as any man has had the honour to die. His
triumphs are many--but the Pole was not by any means the greatest of
them. Surely the greatest was that by which he conquered his weaker self,
and became the strong leader whom we went to follow and came to love.

*       *       *       *       *

Scott had under him this first year in his Main Party a total of 15
officers and 9 men. These officers may be divided into three executive
officers and twelve scientific staff, but the distinction is very rough,
inasmuch as a scientist such as Wilson was every bit as executive as
anybody else, and the executive officers also did much scientific work. I
will try here briefly to give the reader some idea of the personality and
activities of these men as they work any ordinary day in the hut. It
should be noticed that not all the men we had with us were brought to do
sledging work. Some were chosen rather for their scientific knowledge
than for their physical or other fitness for sledging. The regular
sledgers in this party of officers were Scott, Wilson, Evans, Bowers,
Oates (ponies), Meares (dogs), Atkinson (surgeon), Wright (physicist),
Taylor (physiographer), Debenham (geologist), Gran and myself, while Day
was to drive his motors as far as they would go on the Polar Journey.
This leaves Simpson, who was the meteorologist and whose observations had
of necessity to be continuous; Nelson, whose observations into marine
biology, temperatures of sea, salinity, currents and tides came under the
same heading; and Ponting, whose job was photography, and whose success
in this art everybody recognizes.

However much of good I may write of Wilson, his many friends in England,
those who served with him on the ship or in the hut, and most of all
those who had the good fortune to sledge with him (for it is sledging
which is far the greatest test) will all be dissatisfied, for I know that
I cannot do justice to his value. If you knew him you could not like him:
you simply had to love him. Bill was of the salt of the earth. If I were
asked what quality it was before others that made him so useful, and so
lovable, I think I should answer that it was because he never for one
moment thought of himself. In this respect also Bowers, of whom I will
speak in a moment, was most extraordinary, and in passing may I be
allowed to say that this is a most necessary characteristic of a good
Antarctic traveller? We had many such, officers and seamen, and the
success of the expedition was in no small measure due to the general and
unselfish way in which personal likes and dislikes, wishes or tastes were
ungrudgingly subordinated to the common weal. Wilson and Pennell set an
example of expedition first and the rest nowhere which others followed
ungrudgingly: it pulled us through more than one difficulty which might
have led to friction.

Wilson was a man of many parts. He was Scott's right-hand man, he was the
expedition's Chief of the Scientific Staff: he was a doctor of St.
George's Hospital, and a zoologist specializing in vertebrates. His
published work on whales, penguins and seals contained in the Scientific
Report of the Discovery Expedition is still the best available, and makes
excellent reading even to the non-scientist. On the outward journey of
the Terra Nova he was still writing up his work for the Royal Commission
on Grouse Disease, the published report of which he never lived to see.
But those who knew him best will probably remember Wilson by his
water-colour paintings rather than by any other form of his many-sided
work.

As a boy his father sent him away on rambling holidays, the only
condition being that he should return with a certain number of drawings.
I have spoken of the drawings which he made when sledging or when
otherwise engaged away from painting facilities, as at Hut Point. He
brought back to Winter Quarters a note-book filled with such sketches of
outlines and colours: of sunsets behind the Western Mountains: of lights
reflected in the freezing sea or in the glass houses of the ice foot: of
the steam clouds on Erebus by day and of the Aurora Australis by night.
Next door to Scott he rigged up for himself a table, consisting of two
venesta cases on end supporting a large drawing-board some four feet
square. On this he set to work systematically to paint the effects which
he had seen and noted. He painted with his paper wet, and necessarily
therefore, he worked quickly. An admirer of Ruskin, he wished to paint
what he saw as truly as possible. If he failed to catch the effect he
wished, he tore up the picture however beautiful the result he had
obtained. There is no doubt as to the faithfulness of his colouring: the
pictures recalled then and will still recall now in intimate detail the
effects which we saw together. As to the accuracy of his drawing it is
sufficient to say that in the Discovery Expedition Scott wrote on his
Southern Journey:

"Wilson is the most indefatigable person. When it is fine and clear, at
the end of our fatiguing days he will spend two or three hours seated in
the door of the tent, sketching each detail of the splendid mountainous
coast-scene to the west. His sketches are most astonishingly accurate; I
have tested his proportions by actual angular measurement and found them
correct."[136]

In addition to the drawings of land, pack, icebergs and Barrier, the
primary object of which was scientific and geographical, Wilson has left
a number of paintings of atmospheric phenomena which are not only
scientifically accurate but are also exceedingly beautiful. Of such are
the records of auroral displays, parhelions, paraselene, lunar halos, fog
bows, irridescent clouds, refracted images of mountains and mirage
generally. If you look at a picture of a parhelion by Wilson not only can
you be sure that the mock suns, circles and shafts appeared in the sky as
they are shown on paper, but you can also rest assured that the number of
degrees between, say, the sun and the outer ring of light were in fact
such as he has represented them. You can also be certain in looking at
his pictures that if cirrus cloud is shown, then cirrus and not stratus
cloud was in the sky: if it is not shown, then the sky was clear. It is
accuracy such as this which gives an exceptional value to work viewed
from a scientific standpoint. Mention should also be made of the
paintings and drawings made constantly by Wilson for the various
specialists on the expedition whenever they wished for colour records of
their specimens; in this connection the paintings of fish and various
parasites are especially valuable.

I am not specially qualified to judge Wilson from the artistic point of
view. But if you want accuracy of drawing, truth of colour, and a
reproduction of the soft and delicate atmospheric effects which obtain in
this part of the world, then you have them here. Whatever may be said of
the painting as such, it is undeniable that an artist of this type is of
inestimable value to an expedition which is doing scientific and
geographical work in a little-known part of the earth.

Wilson himself set a low value on his artistic capacity. We used to
discuss what Turner would have produced in a land which offered colour
effects of such beauty. If we urged him to try and paint some peculiar
effect and he felt that to do so was beyond his powers he made no scruple
of saying so. His colour is clear, his brush-work clean: and he handled
sledging subjects with the vigour of a professional who knew all there
was to be known about a sledging life.

[Illustration: LEADING PONIES ON THE BARRIER--E. A. Wilson, del.]

Scott and Wilson worked hand in hand to further the scientific objects of
the expedition. For Scott, though no specialist in any one branch, had a
most genuine love of science. "Science--the rock foundation of all
effort," he wrote; and whether discussing ice problems with Wright,
meteorology with Simpson, or geology with Taylor, he showed not only a
mind which was receptive and keen to learn, but a knowledge which was
quick to offer valuable suggestions. I remember Pennell condemning
anything but scientific learning in dealing with the problems round us;
'no guesswork' was his argument. But he emphatically made an exception of
Scott, who had an uncanny knack of hitting upon a solution. Over and
over again in his diary we can read of the interest he took in pure and
applied science, and it is doubtful whether this side of an expedition in
high northern or southern latitudes has ever been more fortunate in their
leader.

Wilson's own share in the scientific results is more obvious because he
was the director of the work. But no published reports will give an
adequate idea of the ability he showed in co-ordinating the various
interests of a varied community, nor of the tact he displayed in dealing
with the difficulties which arose. Above all his judgment was excellent,
and Scott as well as the rest of us relied upon him to a very great
extent. The value of judgment in a land where a wrong decision may mean
disaster as well as loss of life is beyond all price; weather in which
changes are most sudden is a case in point, also the state of sea-ice,
the direction to be followed in difficult country when sledging, the best
way of taking crevassed areas when they must be crossed, and all the ways
by which the maximum of result may be combined with the minimum of danger
in a land where Nature is sometimes almost too big an enemy to fight: all
this wants judgment, and if possible experience. Wilson could supply
both, for his experience was as wide as that of Scott, and I have
constantly known Scott change his mind after a talk with Bill. For the
rest I give quotations from Scott's diary:

"He has had a hand in almost every lecture given, and has been consulted
in almost every effort which has been made towards the solution of the
practical or theoretical problems of our Polar world."[137]

Again:

"Words must always fail me when I talk of Bill Wilson. I believe he
really is the finest character I ever met--the closer one gets to him the
more there is to admire. Every quality is so solid and dependable; cannot
you imagine how that counts down here? Whatever the matter, one knows
Bill will be sound, shrewdly practical, intensely loyal and quite
unselfish. Add to this a wider knowledge of persons and things than is
at first guessable, a quiet vein of humour and really consummate tact,
and you have some idea of his values. I think he is the most popular
member of the party, and that is saying much."[138]

And at the end, when Scott himself lay dying, he wrote to Mrs. Wilson:

"I can do no more to comfort you, than to tell you that he died as he