The Worst Journey in the World (88 page)

At a point about 9000 feet up, Priestley, Gran, Abbott and Hooper started
to make the ascent to the active crater on December 10. They packed the
tent, poles, bags, inner cooker and cooking gear, with four days'
provisions, and reached the second crater at about 11,500 feet, to be
hung up by cloud all the next day. At these altitudes the temperature
varied between -10° and -30°, though at sea-level simultaneously they
were round about freezing-point. By 1 A.M. on the 12th the conditions
were good—clear, with a southerly wind blowing the steam away from the
summit. The party got away as soon as possible and reached the lip of the
active crater in a few hours. Looking down they were unable to see the
bottom, for it was full of steam: the sides sloped at a steep angle for
some 500 feet, when they became sheer precipices: the opening appeared to
be about 14,000 paces round. The top is mostly pumice, but there is also
a lot of kenyte, much the same as at sea-level: the old crater was mostly
kenyte, proving that this is the oldest rock of the island: felspar
crystals must be continually thrown out, for they were lying about on the
top of the snow; I have one nearly 3½ inches long.

Two men went back to the camp, for one had a frost-bitten foot. This left
Priestley and Gran, who tried to boil the hypsometer but failed owing to
the wind, which was variable and enveloped them from time to time in
steam and sulphur vapour. They left a record on a cairn and started to
return. But when they had got 500 feet down Priestley found that he had
left a tin of exposed films on the top instead of the record. Gran said
he would go back and change it. He had reached the top when there was a
loud explosion: large blocks of pumice were hurled out with a big smoke
cloud; probably a big bubble had burst. Gran was in the middle of it,
heard it gurgle before it burst, saw "blocks of pumiceous lava, in shape
like the halves of volcanic bombs, and with bunches of long, drawn-out,
hair-like shreds of glass in their interior."
^[336]
This was Pélé's hair.
Gran was a bit sick from sulphur dioxide fumes afterwards. They reached
Cape Royds on the 16th, the very successful trip taking fifteen days.

Meanwhile Shackleton's old hut was very pleasant at this time of year: in
winter it was a bit too draughty. With bright sunlight, a lop on the sea
which splashed and gurgled under the ice-foot, the beautiful mountains
all round us, and the penguins nesting at our door, this was better than
the Beardmore Glacier, where we had expected to be at this date. What
then must it have been to the six men who were just returned from the
very Gate of Hell? And the food: "Truly Shackleton's men must have fed
like turkey-cocks from all the delicacies here: boiled chicken, kidneys,
mushrooms, ginger, Garibaldi biscuits, soups of all kinds: it is a
splendid change. Best of all are the fresh-buttered skua's eggs which we
make for breakfast. In fact, life is bearable with all that has been
unknown so long at last cleared up, and our anxieties for Campbell's
party laid at rest."
^[337]

For three weeks I worked among the Adélie penguins at Cape Royds, and
obtained a complete series of their embryos. It was always Wilson's idea
that embryology was the next job of a vertebral zoologist down south. I
have already explained that the penguin is an interesting link in the
evolutionary chain, and the object of getting this embryo is to find out
where the penguins come in. Whether or no they are more primitive
than other nonflying birds, such as the apteryx, the ostrich, the rhea
and the moa, which last is only just extinct, is an open question. But
wingless birds are still hanging on to the promontories of the southern
continents, where there is less rivalry than in the highly populated
land areas of the north. It may be that penguins are descended from
ancestors who lived in the northern hemisphere in a winged condition
(even now you may sometimes see them try to fly), and that they have been
driven towards the south.

If penguins are primitive, it is rational to infer that the most
primitive penguin is farthest south. These are the two Antarcticists, the
Emperor and the Adélie. The latter appears to be the more numerous and
successful of the two, and for this reason we are inclined to search
among the Emperors as being among the most primitive penguins, if not the
most primitive of birds now living: hence the Winter Journey. I was glad
to get, in addition, this series of Adélie penguins' embryos, feeling
somewhat like a giant who had wandered on to the wrong planet, and who
was distinctly in the way of its true inhabitants.

We returned too late to see the eggs laid, and therefore it was
impossible to tell how old the embryos were. My hopes rose, however, when
I saw some eggless nests with penguins sitting upon them, but later I
found that these were used as bachelor quarters by birds whose wives were
sitting near. I tried taking eggs from nests and was delighted to find
that new eggs appeared: these I carefully marked, and it was not until I
opened one two days later to find inside an embryo at least two weeks
old, that I realized that penguins added baby-snatching to their other
immoralities. Some of those from whom I took eggs sat upon stones of a
similar size and shape with every appearance of content: one sat upon the
half of the red tin of a Dutch cheese. They are not very intelligent.

All the world loves a penguin: I think it is because in many respects
they are like ourselves, and in some respects what we should like to be.
Had we but half their physical courage none could stand against us. Had
we a hundredth part of their maternal instinct we should have to kill our
children by the thousand. Their little bodies are so full of curiosity
that they have no room for fear. They like mountaineering, and joy-riding
on ice-floes: they even like to drill.

One day there had been a blizzard, and lying open to the view of all was
a deserted nest, a pile of coveted stones. All the surrounding rookery
made their way to and fro, each husband acquiring merit, for, after each
journey, he gave his wife a stone. This was the plebeian way of doing
things; but my friend who stood, ever so unconcerned, upon a rock knew a
trick worth two of that: he and his wife who sat so cosily upon the other
side.

The victim was a third penguin. He was without a mate, but this was an
opportunity to get one. With all the speed his little legs could compass
he ran to and fro, taking stones from the deserted nest, laying them
beneath a rock, and hurrying back for more. On that same rock was my
friend. When the victim came up with his stone he had his back turned.
But as soon as the stone was laid and the other gone for more, he jumped
down, seized it with his beak, ran round, gave it to his wife and was
back on the rock (with his back turned) before you could say Killer
Whale. Every now and then he looked over his shoulder, to see where the
next stone might be.

I watched this for twenty minutes. All that time, and I do not know for
how long before, that wretched bird was bringing stone after stone. And
there were no stones there. Once he looked puzzled, looked up and swore
at the back of my friend on his rock, but immediately he came back, and
he never seemed to think he had better stop. It was getting cold and I
went away: he was coming for another.

The life of an Adélie penguin is one of the most unchristian and
successful in the world. The penguin which went in for being a true
believer would never stand the ghost of a chance. Watch them go to bathe.
Some fifty or sixty agitated birds are gathered upon the ice-foot,
peering over the edge, telling one another how nice it will be, and what
a good dinner they are going to have. But this is all swank: they are
really worried by a horrid suspicion that a sea-leopard is waiting to eat
the first to dive. The really noble bird, according to our theories,
would say, "I will go first and if I am killed I shall at any rate have
died unselfishly, sacrificing my life for my companions"; and in time
all the most noble birds would be dead. What they really do is to try and
persuade a companion of weaker mind to plunge: failing this, they hastily
pass a conscription act and push him over. And then—bang,
helter-skelter, in go all the rest.

They take turns in sitting on their eggs, and after many days the fathers
may be seen waddling down towards the sea with their shirt-fronts
muddied, their long trick done. It may be a fortnight before they return,
well-fed, clean, pleased with life, and with a grim determination to
relieve their wives, to do their job. Sometimes they are met by others
going to bathe. They stop and pass the time of day. Well! Perhaps it
would be more pleasant, and what does a day or two matter anyhow. They
turn; clean and dirty alike are off to the seaside again. This is when
they say, "The women are splendid."

Life is too strenuous for them to have any use for the virtues of
brotherly love, good works, charity and benevolence. When they mate the
best thief wins: when they nest the best pair of thieves hatch out their
eggs. In a long unbroken stream, which stretches down below the sea-ice
horizon, they march in from the open sea. Some are walking on their human
feet: others tobogganing upon their shiny white breasts. After their long
walk they must have a sleep, and then the gentlemen make their way into
the already crowded rookery to find them wives. But first a suitor must
find, or steal, a pebble, for such are the penguin jewels: they are of
lava, black, russet or grey, with almond-shaped crystals bedded in them.
They are rare and of all sizes, but that which is most valued is the size
of a pigeon's egg. Armed with one of these he courts his maid, laying it
at her feet. If accepted he steals still more stones: she guards them
jealously, taking in the meantime any safe opportunity to pick others
from under her nearest neighbours. Any penguin which is unable to fight
and steal successfully fails to make a good high nest, or loses it when
made. Then comes a blizzard, and after that a thaw: for it thaws
sometimes right down by the sea-shore where the Adélies have their
nurseries. The eggs of the strong and wicked hatch out, but those of the
weak are addled. You must have a jolly good pile of stones to hatch eggs
after a blizzard like that in December 1911, when the rookeries were
completely snow-covered: nests, eggs, parents and all.

Once hatched the chicks grow quickly from pretty grey atoms of down to
black lumps of stomach topped by a small and quite inadequate head. They
are two or more weeks old, and they leave their parents, or their parents
leave them, I do not know which. If socialism be the nationalization of
the means of production and distribution, then they are socialists. They
divide into parents and children. The adult community comes up from the
open sea, bringing food inside them: they are full of half-digested
shrimps. But not for their own children: these, if not already dead, are
lost in a crowd of hungry tottering infants which besiege each
food-provider as he arrives. But not all of them can get food, though all
of them are hungry. Some have already been behindhand too long: they have
not managed to secure food for days, and they are weak and cold and very
weary.

"As we stood there and watched this race for food we were gradually
possessed with the idea that the chicks looked upon each adult coming up
full-bellied from the shore as not a parent only, but a food-supply. The
parents were labouring under a totally different idea, and intended
either to find their own infants and feed them, or else to assimilate
their already partially digested catch themselves. The more robust of the
young thus worried an adult until, because of his importunity, he was
fed. But with the less robust a much more pathetic ending was the rule. A
chick that had fallen behind in this literal race for life, starving and
weak, and getting daily weaker because it could not run fast enough to
insist on being fed, again and again ran off pursuing with the rest.
Again and again it stumbled and fell, persistently whining out its hunger
in a shrill and melancholy pipe, till at last the race was given up.
Forced thus by sheer exhaustion to stop and rest, it had no chance of
getting food. Each hurrying parent with its little following of hungry
chicks, intent on one thing only, rushed quickly by, and the starveling
dropped behind to gather strength for one more effort. Again it fails, a
robuster bird has forced the pace, and again success is wanting to the
runt. Sleepily it stands there, with half-shut eyes, in a torpor
resulting from exhaustion, cold, and hunger, wondering perhaps what all
the bustle round it means, a little dirty, dishevelled dot, in the race
for life a failure, deserted by its parents, who have hunted vainly for
their own offspring round the nest in which they hatched it, but from
which it may by now have wandered half a mile. And so it stands, lost to
everything around, till a skua in its beat drops down beside it, and with
a few strong, vicious pecks puts an end to the failing life."
^[338]

There is a great deal to be said for this kind of treatment. The Adélie
penguin has a hard life: the Emperor penguin a horrible one. Why not kill
off the unfit right away, before they have had time to breed, almost
before they have had time to eat? Life is a stern business in any case:
why pretend that it is anything else? Or that any but the best can
survive at all? And in consequence, I challenge you to find a more jolly,
happy, healthy lot of old gentlemen in the world. We
must
admire them:
if only because they are so much nicer than ourselves! But it is grim:
Nature is an uncompromising nurse.

Nature was going to give us a bad time too if we were not relieved, and
on January 17, as there were still no signs of the ship, it was decided
to prepare for another winter. We were to go on rations; to cook with
oil, for nearly all the coal was gone; to kill and store up seal. On
January 18 we started our preparations, digging a cave to store more
meat, and so forth. I went off seal hunting after breakfast, and having
killed and cut up two, came back across the Cape at mid-day. All the men
were out working in the camp. There was nothing to be seen in the Sound,
and then, quite suddenly, the bows of the ship came out from behind the
end of the Barne Glacier, two or three miles away. We watched her
cautious approach with immense relief.