June 24
Still feeling miserable. Today on the schedule, Bailey asked me to move my schedule back to the morning, explaining that the new time interrupted Little America's midday schedules with the U.S. When I asked Dyer how important this was, he said it was up to me, and that he was agreeable to continuing our afternoon schedule. «Then let it stand,» I said. And yet, Bailey's request, was on second thought a good sign. Proof to me that the men at Little America, always independent and touchy about their rights, construed my own request as nothing worse than an arbitrary whim on the part of the C.O. to coddle himself.
June 25
Nothing. . nothing. .
June 26
I've been counting calories, and find that I average about 1,200 daily. Not enough. I should average about 2,500. This morning, for the sake of the extra calories, I melted a big chunk of butter into the hot, sweet milk. Supper menu tonight: dried lima beans, rice, and tomatoes, plus canned turnip tops, plus Virginia ham. I'm eating more nowadays, but my appetite is zero.
June 27
Nothing — and yet, there must be countless things to write about, if I had the will to look. .
Next day brought news in plenty. I met the radio schedule on time. Dyer said briskly and with characteristic Yankee understatement: «Doc and Charlie are both waiting. I think you will be interested in what they have to say.»
Tractor Number One, with Poulter himself aboard, two days before had made the trial run through Amundsen Arm and to the crest of high Barrier just beyond, approximately eleven miles south of Little America. «Everything went very nicely,» Poulter said. «We side-stepped the crevasses and had no special difficulty following the trail. The flags are standing all right, and don't seem to have been frayed much by the wind. Just about the time we'd have one flag abeam, the next flag would be showing up in the headlights. However, I may be able to throw together a makeshift searchlight, which ought to help a lot.
Then, without preliminaries, the Senior Scientist launched into a proposal of his own. It was that the meteor trip proposed earlier be extended to Advance Base in order to observe a meteor shower which was due early in August. Two errands might therefore be disposed of in a single stroke. By continuing on to Advance Base, he said, the observations would benefit from the extended base line and the observers would have the protection of my shack; on my side, I could return with the tractor, if I wished to come, instead of waiting for the base-laying expedition later on. The size of the party was still indefinite, but his first estimate was five men. Of these, two would remain a month at Advance Base and continue the meteor and weather observations.
The present plan, Dr. Poulter continued, was to shove off from Little America at the first clear spell between July 23rd and the 29th. At that time the moon at midnight would be full in the south dead ahead, and the light of the sun would be strongest at their back at noon. Poulter did not wish to leave much later than that because the oncoming dawn would ruin the opportunities for continuous observations; but, on the other hand, neither he nor the other officers at Little America thought it would be wise to leave earlier. Besides, Demas estimated that it would require at least three weeks to complete the overhauling of the other two machines; it did not seem prudent to start out before they were available as a reserve.
That was the story, presented as matter-of-factly as a meteorological summary. I couldn't believe the words striking like pebbles on the earphones. It was more like one of the hallucinations which had bedeviled me after the first collapse. But no: that calm, hesitant voice went on and on, discussing the various aspects of the journey with a logic and reasonableness that couldn't spring from a fevered imagination. No such great good news was ever broken so unexpectedly. It flashed through my mind that if Poulter and Murphy, both men of rare judgement, wanted to make the trip, it could not be considered too hazardous at Little America. This is their show, not yours, the inner voice said; they want to come here on their own account, and you need have no shame.
Then I heard Poulter ask, «Well, what do you think of it?»
Though my hand was on the key, my mind was irresolute. «Wait a minute,» I tapped out. No matter what happened, it would still be my show; the consequences of failure would still be on my head. And, not knowing what to answer, I finally told him to make more trial runs and let me know the results. Yet, even as I said this, I knew deep in my heart that I should never have the will to refuse him. I had been through too much to cast aside any straw. Moreover, the consequences of this affair would involve more than my family and myself. I had a huge debt, and an expedition poised for a great task in the spring. If I went down, a frightful mess would almost certainly result. Not just because I, Richard Byrd, had died, as all men must die; but because with me would vanish the ephemeral tensions that held a hundred men to a single cause — the leadership, the plan, and the name which had been able to command credit to pay for the outfitting of ships, tractors, airplanes, and men, because that name was able to draw profitable numbers of people into lecture halls, movie theaters, and before radio loud-speakers. The name was the asset, not the pain-ridden, bankrupt body which bore it. But what has this to do with me?
All that afternoon and well into the night, I sat cross-legged in the sleeping bag, weighing the pros and cons. In my lap were the nautical almanac, logarithm tables, pencil and a pad, and a chart of the Southern Trail. As Poulter had said, the moon would be back during the second fortnight in July, and full commencing the third week; and the sun, mounting to the horizon at accelerating speed, would be near enough to make for some light at noon. I covered sheets of paper with figures. I tried to estimate the fuel consumption and capacity of the tractors, and to envisage the safety precautions which should be outlined for the tractor crews. In the end everything must turn upon the men. If they were resolute, prudent, and trail-wise, the risks ought not to be too great nor the hardships too severe.
The big question was whether the trail could be followed with the amount of light there would be in July. On account of the danger of crevasses, particularly those lying in the valley just beyond 50-Mile Depot, this journey would be no straight compass run from Little America. The tractor must hold to the trail flagged by the Southern Party, if it expected to negotiate safely the detour beyond 50-Mile Depot. On the way back to Little America from Advance Base in March, the tractor party had doubled the flags, spacing them at intervals of one-sixth of a mile. The danger was that the blizzards might have blown down or obliterated scores of them, leaving big gaps in the 123-mile line.
There was no sure way to judge this, short of attempting the journey. True, the results of Poulter's trial run had been encouraging; and in the vicinity of Advance Base the flags, when I had last seen them by moonlight, had appeared to be standing all right. Drift hadn't mounted more than five or six inches around the staffs, although in one or two cases the edges of the flags had been caught and pinned down, making them hard to see. [The flags on the straightaway were rectangular pieces of cloth about a foot wide. They were dyed orange, and mounted on 24- inch split bamboo sticks. Besides these, of course, were pennants and burgees running out at right angles from the depots.] Hereabouts, however, the Barrier was flat, and the drift didn't pile up so much. In the hollows and troughs the flags might be entirely buried. Well, if the flags were buried and the trail couldn't be followed, that would end the matter, at least until after the sun returned.
I really tried hard to be impersonal in my calculations, and so the difficulties confronting the journey began to loom larger. The great hope unloosed in the afternoon slowly died, and a reaction set in. I blew out the candle, depressed and infinitely weary.
June went out on a shrinking moon with rising cold. On Thursday the 28th the pin in the minimum thermometer went to 59 degrees below zero; on Friday, 55 degrees below; and Saturday, 56 degrees below. The film of ice on the walls crept to within three feet of the ceiling, following a zigzag line that reminded me of the charts in schoolbooks showing how the Ice Ages encroached upon the earth.
The last relapse had awakened the original fear that weakness might one day make it impossible for me to bring in fuel. Now, in my stronger moments, I started to build up an emergency supply in the shack, filling all the empty food tins with kerosene. Most of these I stored in the corners of the room; and the overflow, covered with discarded undershirts to keep the snow off, was stored on the veranda, just outside the door. To provide additional containers, I emptied the big tins holding lima beans and rice; as for the beans and rice, they were dumped into a sack — a U.S. mail pouch, of all things. Doubtless the supply officer had thought of that, too.
At midnight, the last hour in the last night of the longest month I have ever known, I started to turn June back behind the other sheets. Then I did a queer thing. I measured the sheet. It was twelve inches high by fourteen inches long. The numerals, white blocks on a blue background, stood one inch high.
