The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [73]
The men were by no means starving, but they were always hungry, and the unrelenting monotony of the virtually carnivorous diet was wearing on their minds as well as their bodies. From time to time, Wild doled out rations of special treats remaining from the eclectic stores they still carried with them. The last of a pearl barley pudding with jam, for example, made a great impression on the company. Lees was horrified at this extravagance, and recorded that it should have been spread over several days, instead of being devoured at one sitting. But Hurley's reaction justifies this indulgence:
“Fine Barley pudding for lunch,” he wrote. “The remnants also of jam. The meal gave us great pleasure, inasmuch as we have not had a full cereal meal for two & 1?months.” The almost forgotten sensation of being satisfied at the end of a meal, together with the sense of an “occasion,” appears to have done wonders for morale, and in a sense made the meal go farther.
The days grew shorter, with sunlight only from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon. Wild's “Lash up and stow” now served only as a wake-up call, for with the men spending up to seventeen hours a day in their bags, there was no need to stow them. The longer darkness made it harder to read, and the few available diversions were circumscribed yet more.
“Everyone spent the day rotting in their bags with blubber and tobacco smoke,”
Elephant Island
“I make this entry on the highest point of our Camping Spit.… The weather is delightful: bright warm sunshine & dead calm. Cape Wild is a narrow neck of land jutting out from the mainland some 220 to 250 yards.…The ocean termination is a precipitous rocky bluff ranging to about 20 feet in height which is guarded oceanwise by a rocky islet that presents a flat jagged face 300 feet in height, called the Gnomon.…I secure photographs. ( Hurley, diary)
Greenstreet wrote bluntly. “So passes another goddam rotten day.” In addition to various nautical books and copies of Walter Scott and Browning, five volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica had been saved from the Endurance library. The most entertainment per page was afforded by Marston's Penny Cookbook, which inspired many imaginary meals.
Bartering with food became the principle pastime. Lees in particular was a demon for this, his propensity for saving odds and ends and his access to the stores ensuring that he always had a small stock of goods with which to negotiate.
“McLeod exchanged a cake of nut-food with Blackborrow for seven half penguin steaks payable at the rate of half a steak daily at breakfast time,” wrote Lees. “Wild exchanged his penguin steak last night for one biscuit with Stephenson. The other day the latter asked me if I would give him a cake of nut-food for all his lump sugar due i.e. at the rate of six lumps per week, and Holness did likewise.”
As the hours of darkness increased, the singsongs to the accompaniment of Hussey's banjo played a more important role. While the wind raged outside, the men lay in their bags, still dressed in their perpetually wet clothing, and sang heartily all the familiar songs that evoked cozy, secure times gone by aboard the Endurance. Sea chanties —”Captain Stormalong,” “A Sailor's Alphabet”— were always favorites, especially when rendered in Wild's fine bass, or by Marston, who had the best voice of anyone in the company. Inventing new songs, or improvising new words to familiar tunes, a genre at which Hussey was a master, allowed the men to let off steam by taking jabs at one another without causing offense:
When faces turn pale 'neath the soot and the grime,
When