United States or Ethiopia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Everything went swimmingly until the 9th, when we sighted South Victoria Land and the continuation of the mountain chain, which Shackleton gives on his map, running southeast from Beardmore Glacier. On the same day we reached lat. 83°, and established here Depot No. 4.
His pony Victor stepped out again as though nothing had been added. Such incidents are very inspiriting. Of course, the surface is very good; the animals rarely sink to the fetlock joint, and for a good part of the time are borne up on hard snow patches without sinking at all. In passing I mention that there are practically no places where ponies sink to their hocks as described by Shackleton.
There is no beef, I suppose?" "Not so much as a hoof." "No butter?" "Not enough to cover a sixpence." "There is cheese, however." He lifted up a scrap upon a fork. "There will be none to-morrow." "And as for pay?" he asked slyly. "Two years and a half in arrears." Knightley laughed again. "Moreover," added Shackleton, "out of our nothing we may presently have to feed the fleet.
"In the morning," continued Wyley, "Ensign Knightley takes part in a skirmish, and is clubbed on the head so fiercely that Major Shackleton thought his skull must be broken in. At what hour was he struck?" Again he put the question quickly. "'Twixt seven and eight of the morning," replied the Major. "Quite so," said Wyley. "The incidents fit to a nicety.
Writing from Battersea to his old comrade, Shackleton, in 1757, he begins with an apology for a long silence which seems to have continued from months to years. "I have broken all rules; I have neglected all decorums; everything except that I have never forgot a friend, whose good head and heart have made me esteem and love him.
It was his brother-in-law who had crossed the moor and approached the churchyard of Shackleton, exactly in the line which the image of his father had seemed to take in his strange vision. Fortunately for Jack Everton, the sexton and clerk of Shackleton church were, unseen by him, crossing the churchyard toward the grave of Nelly Chuff, just as Tom the poacher stumbled and fell.
Shackleton was found to be very far indeed from well, but although Scott and Wilson both showed symptoms of scurvy they still felt that, as far as they were concerned, there was no danger of a breakdown. On that day they made a fairly good march, but at the end of it Wilson had to warn Scott that Shackleton's condition was really alarming.
Rejecting his suggestion that he should be left alone while they pressed on for help, Crean and Lashly pulled him on the sledge with a devotion matching that of their captain years before, when he and Wilson had brought Shackleton, ill and helpless, safely to the Discovery.
He gave up drinking; he was as kind as an originally surly nature would allow to his wife and family; he went to church; in fine weather they crossed the moor to Shackleton Church; the vicar said he came there to look at the scenery of his vision, and to fortify his good resolutions by the reminder.
For if, when Shackleton passed the Bay of Whales on January, 24, 1908, and saw the ice of the bay in process of breaking up and drifting out, he had waited a few hours, or at the most a couple of days, the problem of the South Pole would probably have been solved long before December, 1911.
Word Of The Day