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People thought it a matter of course that he would make for Beardmore Glacier, which Shackleton had discovered, and by that route come out on to the high snow plateau near the Pole, since there he would be sure of getting forward. We who knew Amundsen thought it would be more like him to avoid a place for the very reason that it had been trodden by others. Happily we were right.
Bon chat, bon rat; we are not made of jelly. Tessin, see to Knightley." The two men withdrew. Major Shackleton scribbled a note and despatched it to Sir Palmes Fairborne, the Lieutenant-Governor. Scrope took a turn or two across the room while the Major was writing the news which Knightley had brought.
Shackleton, it might be observed, found that there has been a considerable shrinkage of the south polar ice within the period of exploration. But we shall find that a difference of climate, as compared with earlier ages, was already evident in the middle of the Tertiary Era, and it is far more noticeable to-day.
He pushed the door open, he set a foot in the passage, and then the roar of a gun shook the room. "Ah!" remarked Wyley, "the signal for your sortie." Knightley stopped and listened. Major Shackleton stood in a fixed attitude with his eyes upon the floor. He had hit upon an issue, it seemed to him by inspiration. The noise of the gun was followed by ten clear strokes of a bell.
"I know your voice," he replied doubtfully. "You're the mate of the Daisy." "My name is Shackleton," I said. Immediately he put out his hand and said, "Come in. Come in." "Tell me, when was the war over?" I asked. "The war is not over," he answered. "Millions are being killed. Europe is mad. The world is mad." Mr. Sorlle's hospitality had no bounds.
They were fed with maize, compressed fodder, and concentrated food, but when during the journey they had to be put on short commons they ate up straps, rope ends, and one another's tails. The four men had provisions for fully three months. While the smoke rose from the crater of Erebus, Shackleton marched southwards over snow-covered ice.
Our next land was to be Cape Shackleton, one of the most prolific bird-colonies of the coast, which we were all looking to, much as sailors nearing home in their boats after disaster and short allowance at sea.
By this time only four dogs were left, Nigger, Jim, Birdie and Lewis, and poor Nigger was so lost out of harness that he sometimes got close to the traces and marched along as if he was still doing his share of the pulling. But this more or less ordinary day was followed on the 10th by a march in a blizzard that exhausted Scott and Wilson, and had even a more serious effect upon Shackleton.
I never saw anybody less vicious in nature than "Mother" Meares: he never knocked the dogs about unless it was absolutely necessary. Even Osman, the wild wolf-like king-dog, showed affection for him. Whilst moving the sledging stores to Safety Camp, as we called the depot, two miles in, we came across two tents left by Shackleton two or three years before.
In the interval of nearly seventy years, it is safe to assume that the position of the south magnetic pole has shifted forty miles. In spite of the knowledge obtained in other directions, Shackleton frankly admits that the secret of the great ice barrier cannot be learned until the structure and trend of the mountain ranges which seem to form its edge are traced.
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