A. H. Macklin

“ I was in the crow’s nest the moment that the dim midnight light began to improve, searching all round the horizon with binoculars. Everywhere the ice lay tightly packed and solid. McIlroy reported a further drop of two degrees Fahrenheit. The filmy, freezing surface of the leads had become definitely frozen over, so that there was not a drop of water to be seen anywhere. Even to the northward the outlook was bad, and I began to fear that after all we might be beset. That we could push no farther into the heavy ice was certain. ”

“ As far as the actual weather was concerned the Antarctic can offer nothing better than that which we were experiencing, fine and clear, the air crisp and cold, yet not sufficiently so to be unpleasant. As the sun sloped down to the horizon with the gentle decline it takes in these latitudes, in contrast to the suddenness with which it disappears in the tropics, we had a beautiful long sunset, the sky taking the most wonderful colours, crimson, amber and gold. ”

“ Leaving the “Roaring Forties,” the air became milder and the temperature rose, so that we were able once more to go about without heavy clothing and could cast aside mufflers, mitts and woollen caps.
We sighted Inaccessible Island just after midnight on May 19th. It appeared as a high mass with dimly marked outline obscured at the top by dark banks of cloud. As we came abreast of it the moon came out, creating a very weird effect. The island itself stood out in deep, almost Stygian, blackness, and from its summit smoke seemed to be belching in great rolling masses. ”

“ Throughout the whole period that we were navigating about the pack edge, I was constantly made to feel how extremely fortunate we were to have escaped unscathed from the ice after the loss of the Endurance. That we got away at all is truly marvellous, for not once in a dozen times could a frail ship’s boat win free under similar circumstances where the floes, coming together, must have cracked her like an eggshell. ”

“ On the ice seals are sluggish and very helpless, but in the water they are wonderful, and their swimming movements are most graceful as they dart about twisting and turning and occasionally rising to look round.
Killers were about earlier in the day, but no penguins. An ugly-looking sea-leopard put his head out of the water and gazed malignantly over the edge of the floe. In a pool at some distance from the ship I caught sight of a black mass rising and falling, and through my binoculars witnessed what appeared to be a fight between two sea-leopards. ”

“ Before this effort the smallest ship to make a serious attempt to penetrate the heavy Antarctic pack was the Endurance, and she lies crushed and broken many fathoms 100 deep in the Weddell Sea. We are but half her size! Shall we escape, or will the Quest go to join the ships in Davy Jones’s Locker, and the queer deep-sea fish nose about amongst her broken spars? We are not in the least pessimistic, but the man who blinds himself to the possibility is a fool. ”

“ After lunch we paid a visit to the tomb of Napoleon and the house at Longwood where he lived whilst on the island. The tomb is in a deep hollow, and for so great a man is very unimposing. It is covered with a large marble slab, blank, with no inscription of any sort. Some time after his death his body was exhumed and taken to Paris, when it was laid finally in Les Invalides, where a magnificent and more fitting tomb has been erected to his memory. The house at Longwood also is unimposing. One can imagine how his restless spirit must have chafed at its confinement. ”

“ The building itself is a bright, well-lighted place and contains things of the most absorbing interest beautifully set up. In the hall the whole history of polar exploration is set out on two immense half-globes; there is the sledge taken by Peary to the North Pole and the one used by Amundsen in his race for the South Pole. The specimens are wonderful and the setting of them is the work of artists who know their job, for everything is lifelike and natural. ”

“ Certain it is that few people who have travelled away from the beaten track and spent long, unbroken periods face to face with Nature can hope to escape the sudden feelings of restlessness and disquietude which come upon one without warning and drive one to pacing up and down, to face the rain on a gusty night, or do anything so long as one can be alone for a while. ”

“ I suppose Douglas is right when he remarks that the Quest is not a beautiful ship, for her lines certainly cannot be described as yacht-like. Yet as my affection for her grew she appeared more and more beautiful in my eyes, till, thinking of her in retrospect, I have almost a feeling of resentment at any such criticism. After all, beauty is largely a matter of what we are educated to regard as such, and our ideas change, as witness what are to us to-day the extraordinary “fashions” of only fifty years ago! ”

“ It has been my fortune to visit many parts of the world, and I can recall wonderful evenings in many places which have created a deep impression on me, but there particularly stand out in my mind’s eye some of the long Antarctic autumn twilights too beautiful to describe. I have seen the most materialistic and unimpressionable of men strung to an absolute silence, scarcely daring to breathe, filled with something intangible and inexplicable. The very sledge dogs stand stock still, gazing intently into the farness, ears cocked, listening—for what? ”

“ The bulls, except in the rutting season, usually remain apart from the cows, which collect, together with their young, into harems numbering from fifteen to fifty. The flippers, though short, are wonderfully flexible, and have curious little rudimentary fingers with which they scratch themselves in what is, at times, a ludicrously human way. They are fond of heaping sand upon themselves. When approached they make a curious windy roaring noise, and they may often be heard trumpeting from their wallows. Wilkins, in crossing the island, saw a sea-elephant track which led the whole way over. ”

“ In a snow-covered forest glade there are timber wolves on the prowl after game, flamingoes stand amongst the reeds in a swamp where the muddy ripples seem almost to move, one can gaze into tree-tops and see monkeys on the swing from branch to branch, reptiles swarm about a pool of water in a tropical forest, and there are other examples too numerous to mention. ”

“ A wet, snowy slush on the deck does not help matters. Argles was thrown off his feet and, crashing across the deck, fetched up on the other side against a bucket, severely bruising face, chest and hands. Meals are a screaming comedy or a tragedy, as you like to take them; everything placed on the table promptly charges for the scuppers, and fiddles are almost useless. McIlroy, “Kraskie,” Kerr and myself were sitting on a wooden bench, secured to the floor, holding on to plates and spoons, and endeavouring to guide some food into our mouths. ”

“ Sighting a good solid floe with three seals on it, I put the ship alongside and shot them all with my heavy rifle. I went over on to the floe with Macklin to bleed them, which done, they were hoisted aboard, and McIlroy, Dell and Macklin flensed and cut them up. The blubber went to the bunkers to eke out our supply of coal. Practically the whole of the meat of the seal can be used for eating; whilst the liver, kidneys and heart make very dainty fare. Fried seal’s brain is a dish that can hardly be excelled anywhere in the world. ”

“ It is smaller than the larger varieties of true whale, but it has immense jaws and a wide gullet, and lives not on whale food but on seals and penguins, and it is conceivable that it has on occasions accommodated a man; though whether it ever let one go again is a different matter. The killer is certainly an evil-looking monster. Before we had entered deeply into the pack we saw numbers of them gliding about us, driven smoothly forward by almost imperceptible movements of their powerful flukes, the downward strokes of which produce small whirlpools on the surface of the water. ”

“ In the “Glen Anchorage” on the east coast we found shelter and dropped anchor in twelve and a half fathoms.
Just about this time the light began to fail, and in the gathering dusk the island had a most romantic appearance. The glen forms a deep cleft at the back of which the island rises to a height of several thousand feet, marked here and there by bold outstanding masses of rock. Most remarkable of these is the “Apostle,” a lofty solid crag which from its commanding position overlooks and dominates the glen. High up on one side is a long narrow obelisk, rising straight and steep. ”

“ Macklin sustained a nasty cut during the flensing, running his hand off the haft of the knife on to the blade. He rather prided himself on his knives, on which he kept a razor edge, and on his flensing, and I think he felt annoyed at his clumsiness, for it was with an almost shamefaced air that he went to McIlroy to get his hand bound up.
The art of keeping a hunting-knife in really good order is one which few people understand. A keen edge is essential for neat and rapid work, yet I have seen many people hacking laboriously away with a blade which would scarcely penetrate butter. ”

“ Truly on this lonely rock in the South Atlantic we have a people who belong rather to the Pastoral Age of the world than to our modern unrestful life, and who, without theory or politics or written laws, have reached that state which has been described by the imaginative writers of all ages, haunted by the thought of the decadent morality of the seething cities, as the Golden Age or the Millennium. ”

“ Amongst them moved little pigeon-like paddy birds (Chionis alba) which look very pretty at a distance, but at close vision are seen to have very ugly heads and beaks. They darted about with little quick steps and, like the penguins, watched us curiously, no doubt wondering what strange new creatures we might be. Dominican gulls, skuas and Cape pigeons flew all about the place, and numbers of blue-eyed shags perched on rocks close to the sea or, with necks outstretched and stiff as ramrods, flew with an intent air to their fishing in the bay. ”

“ In the meantime the bulk of the personnel had been collected, some of the men having come from far distant parts of the world to join in the adventure, abandoning their businesses to do so. Some of us, knowing of the scheme, had waited for two years, putting aside permanent employment so that we might be free to join when required; for such is the extraordinary attraction of Polar exploration to those who have once engaged in it, that they will give up much, often all they have, to pit themselves once more against the ice and gamble with their lives in this greatest of all games of chance. ”

“ Green and Naisbitt, who formed the galley staff, were, of course, exempt from watch keeping.
At first we had misty weather, and soon encountered a heavy swell in which the Quest rolled heavily. We met numerous icebergs travelling in a north-easterly direction—beautiful works of Nature passing slowly to their doom.
Hundreds of sea-birds tailed in our wake, including numbers of every species known to this part of the world: albatross, cape pigeons, whale birds and every kind of petrel, from the giant “Stinker” to the dainty, ubiquitous Mother Carey’s Chickens. ”

“ There is an island custom that when the men have been engaged on an arduous piece of work at some distant part of the island or have had a heavy day in the boats, the women come out to meet them on their return with something hot to drink. Indeed, the women are by no means idle, for they have all the inside housework, cleaning, cooking, mending, sewing and washing of clothes, to do. They card the fleece from the sheep into wool and twist it into strands, using for the purpose old-fashioned wheels which are manufactured with much ingenuity from all sorts of odds and ends of wood and metal. ”

“ We returned to the ship, where we prepared the birds for the larder, and hung them, together with the meat, from the mizen boom, the poop at the finish resembling a butcher’s shop.
Green, who had been before into the Antarctic and had wintered with me on Elephant Island, came out of his galley to regard with a professional eye this new addition to his larder. I asked him if he had forgotten how to cook seal and penguin meat, to which he replied, “Not likely! If I was to live to be a hundred, I would not forget that.” ”

“ From the sea the island is very unprepossessing, rising steeply from the water’s edge and looking bare, hot and dry. Jamestown, the port, lies in a valley which runs backwards and upwards from the sea in a straggling and ever-narrowing line. From the anchorage one gets a refreshing glimpse of green on the inner slopes. One of the first things that catches the eye on looking ashore is a huge ladder, nearly a thousand feet long and over six hundred feet high, which passes from Jamestown to the summit of Ladder Hill. ”

“ Cape pigeons thickly cover the water for hundreds of square yards and present a really extraordinary sight. They chatter and squabble incessantly. Terns flit gracefully about, never settling on the water, but making occasional short dives for morsels. Wilson petrels flit like fairies over the surface, their feet touching, but their bodies never entering the sea. ”

“ For in addition to McIlroy and Lysaght, I have old McLeod as stoker.
Sunday, September 25th.
Fair easterly wind; our topsail and foresail set. All day cleaning up with all hands. We saw the last of England—the Scilly Isles and Bishop Rock, with big seas breaking on them; and now we head out to the west to avoid the Bay of Biscay. With our deep draught we roll along like an old-time ship, our foresail 20 bellying to the breeze. The Boy Scouts are sick—frankly so, though Marr has been working in the stokehold until he really had to give in. ”