The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [75]
Midwinter Day, June 22, was celebrated as it had been on Endurance with a feast, songs, and facetious sketches, all performed by the men from their sleeping bags. Like Shackleton, Wild took care to punctuate the monotonous existence with any excuse for an “occasion.” Toasts were drunk to the King, the Returning Sun, and the Boss and Crew of the Caird with a new concoction consisting of Clark's 90 percent methylated spirit (a preservative for specimens), sugar, water, and ginger (a tin of which, thought to contain pepper, had been brought along by mistake). This “Gut Rot 1916” became greatly popular, especially with Wild himself. The toast to “Sweethearts and Wives” was still drunk on Saturdays.
July brought warmer, wetter weather. The great glacier at the head of the inlet was dropping enormous chunks of ice, which cracked off with the noise of a rifle shot and sent up huge waves upon impact with the water below. A more serious problem, however, was the accumulation of melted snow and ice—and penguin guano—on the hut floor.
“Thaw water having risen to the uncomfortable extent of rendering the shingly floor a sludgy mess, we set about the smelly occupation of bailing out and reshingling,” wrote Hurley. “By means of a “sumphole” some 80 gallons of cesspit odorous liquid was removed.” This unpleasant process was to be repeated throughout the month.
Ice Stalactites
“July 5, 1916: Pleasant calm day though dull. During the morning go walking with Wild. We visit a neighboring cavern in the glacier which was adorned with a magnificence of icicles. Fine shawlike stalactites covered the walls & the roof was adorned with a finish of curiously carved and footlike stalactites.” ( Hurley, diary)
Adding to the general edginess was the fact that the tobacco supply of all but the most frugal and self-disciplined had given out.
“Holness, one of the sailors, sits up in the cold every night after everyone else has turned in gazing intently at Wild & McIlroy in the hopes that one of them will give him the unsmokeable part of a toilet-paper cigarette,” wrote Lees. This crisis elicited a hitherto undetected inventiveness amongst the sailors. With the dedication of laboratory scientists, they methodically tested every combustible fiber as a possible tobacco substitute. Great hopes were pinned on a scheme devised by Bakewell, who collected the pipes of the entire company and boiled them in the hoosh pot together with sennegrass, which was used to insulate their finnesko boots; his theory was that residual nicotine would imbue the grass with its flavor.
“A strong aroma as of a prairie fire pervades the atmosphere,” wrote Hurley. The experiment was a failure, but Bakewell at least was philosophical. “Had we had plenty to eat and to smoke, our minds would have been on our real peril,” he wrote, “which would have been very dangerous to the morale of the camp.”
Smoking was not the only pleasure of which the crew were deprived. Wild had put a halt to the food bartering after Lees managed to garner many weeks' supplies of sugar from the improvident sailors; invoking the opinion of the doctors, Wild informed Lees that the carbohydrate element he had so assiduously procured was necessary for the welfare of the men. Toasts with methylated spirits had become markedly more frequent in July, but this supply too was dwindling, as were, more importantly, the biscuit and precious Nutfood. The powdered milk was gone. Soon there would be only penguin or seal to look forward to for every meal. But the monotony and unhealthfulness of the diet were not all that were becoming wearisome; also taking a toll was the unending need for slaughter.
“About 30 Gentoo Penguins came ashore & I am pleased the weather was too bad to slay them,” wrote Hurley. “We are heartily sick of being compelled to kill every bird that comes ashore for food.”
August 13 was so bright and so mild that a general spring cleaning was undertaken and sleeping