Chapter Twelve — AUGUST: THE SEARCHLIGHT
August began on a Wednesday. It was black with threat. I had never seen the barometer drop so low. The pressure fell to 27.72 inches, and the recording pen ran off the sheet. Watching it fall, I had the feeling that the air was being sucked off the Barrier. But the anemometer cups dawdled on a simpering breeze which was satisfied to box the compass and presently expire. Nothing else happened. Yet, all day I imagined that the Barrier was holding its breath, waiting for the swoop of a hurricane.
My mood was infected by the uncertainty in nature. For the first time I was really on the verge of losing my self-control, I could not sit still for nervousness. I refilled the spare kerosene cans just outside the door, which had been used up during the last setback; and I brought in more food from the tunnel until I had at least two weeks' reserve in the shack. The extra effort taxed me, but I would not — and indeed could not — stop until it was done. Habit and necessity made me do a number of things automatically; they were done in spite of myself.
The fact that I had heard nothing from Little America in five days sharpened my fears. For all I knew, Poulter might be on his way, might, indeed, be close by. I used up the last of my strength setting off another can of gasoline. The surrounding night was empty of signs. So I went to bed and dreamed fitfully of tractors and crevasses and strange unfriendly faces crowding the shack, shutting out something vague which, nevertheless, I ardently desired.
August 2
I hear nothing today; but, to be on the safe side, I set off one can of gasoline in the afternoon and another in the evening. The weather is moderating. From a minimum of 52 degrees below zero yesterday, the temperature has soared to -2 degrees at 11 p.m. There's a light fog, but no wind to speak of.
August 3
Providence has been good to us. Poulter is safe at Little America, and all my futile tinkering with the radio seems to have borne fruit. The messages really made sense today. Poulter hasn't left, but is ready to do so as soon as Haines gives him a good weather report. Little America is fog-bound, but it is wonderfully clear here. At noon the northern sky had a fine rosy hue and a definitely yellow look in the direction of the Ross Sea. The maximum thermometer read zero this morning, but it's getting colder again — nearly 40 degrees below zero now (10 p.m.). The growing light is a factor which each day lessens Poulter's hazards; but on my side I have almost ceased to care. A sort of numbness seems to have claimed me. Dyer must be having a hell of a time at the other end of the conversations. It is a miserable predicament not to be able to answer Little America's urgent questions. But I must say that Dyer and Hutcheson have been wonderfully patient.
August 4
Poulter has started. This afternoon I was told that he had taken departure five hours earlier with two month's rations aboard and a big reserve of gasoline. The weather looks good, for there's practically no wind, and the temperature is steady in the minus thirties. Also, the fact that Poulter is actually headed south again has pierced my torpor, and hope is once more quickening in my heart.
Sunday was a day I should like to rub from memory. I was in ghastly shape when I awakened — too sick to eat and too tired to lose myself in any passing task. I fussed a bit with the register, but my eyes kept bothering me, and I finally sank into the chair beside the stove to wait for the noon schedule. It brought bad news. Poulter was bogged down in the crevasses on the Little America side of Amundsen Arm. He had missed the passage which had carried him safely through before; in trying to negotiate a new transit, he had lost his way and was even then trying to extricate the car from a pothole crevasse into which it had fallen.
Because the receiver was acting up again, it took me some little time to get these facts straight; and, when I had them in full view after hearing the combined reports of Murphy and Haines, they seemed enormous. If Poulter was in serious trouble, less than ten miles from Little America, why wasn't something being done to help him? My nerves broke. I jerked at the key: «Charlie and Bill, what in God's name is the matter? Won't another tractor help? Use all resources.»
Charlie was replying as I adjusted the headphone. The anger was gone, and remorse was flooding in; I would have given anything I possessed to recall those words. My friend spoke deliberately, gently, and even, I thought, a little reproachfully. If I do not remember his exact words, I do remember the sense. In his opinion, he said, Poulter was proceeding cautiously and reasonably. A stand-by tractor was ready, and had been ready from the time Poulter left. They were in constant touch with him. Although Poulter had been offered the full facilities of the camp, he had firmly declined them. So there was no cause for alarm. In all probability the tractor would be under way again within a few hours. Finishing, Charlie said, in the same unemotional tone: «Dick, the truth is that we are more worried about you. Are you ill? Are you hurt?»
I tried to dodge the questions by saying that I understood the whole tractor situation. But at this point first my legs and then my arms gave out on the cranks. The message was left dangling in mid-air. Charlie began to talk. He said that what they had heard was only partly intelligible. And again he asked what was wrong. There was no escape then. The old fiction of the lame arm just wouldn't do any more. Murphy was too insistent. He even mentioned something about sending out a doctor. «Nothing to worry about,» I answered finally; «only please don't ask me to crank any more.»
All this was duly committed to the Little America log; and with it John Dyer's incidental observation that «Byrd's strength seems to peter out after every few words.» My evasions therefore fooled nobody but myself. Murphy's misgivings deepened; yet, he professed to be satisfied. «We appreciate how hard the cranking must be,» he said. «Don't worry about us or about Poulter. See you tomorrow.»
August 6
At noon today Poulter was only twenty-one miles south. Yesterday he extricated himself from the crevasse, but since then has been crippled by continuous mechanical trouble. The clutch is slipping badly, the fan belts have all been used up, and Charlie was doubtful that Poulter could do much about it. I sent a reassuring message, only to have Charlie say that Dyer couldn't pick up a word; my signal was too weak. He tactfully suggested that I need not exert myself cranking unless I had an important message; otherwise an OK would mean I was all right. I sent two or three OK's, and closed down for the day.
I've suffered for what I said yesterday. I did my friends at Little America a grave injustice in questioning their judgment and efficiency. Of course they know what they are doing, and from this distance I have no right to meddle. Yet, my chagrin goes beyond that. It maddens me that after sixty-six days I have given myself away in a momentary fit of impatience.
I have no way of telling how much Little America has guessed. Charlie's casualness may be just a mask. Which is what torments me. The last thing I want is to see this trip degenerate into a rescue trip with all the risks and humiliations which such a trip would involve. And again I say this in all humility. This business has long since passed the ephemeral consideration of pride or face-saving; it is now one of cold calculation. If they are tempted into recklessness, and something goes wrong, my chances of ever getting out of here will suffer, too; for the Barrier is not a fit place for worried, anxious men. So my solicitude is definitely selfish. Obviously, the officers at Little America are acting with profound care as to the risks. They could not act otherwise without betraying me and the men under them. .
All this notwithstanding, I wish to heaven the matter were settled, one way or another. I can't go on this way, raised one minute by hope and dropped the next by failure. Every day my recuperative resources grow a little less; and for this I mostly blame the radio. The steady cranking has raised hell with me. When I finish a schedule, I am reduced to staggering about in a condition approaching helplessness. One can put up with such misery only so long, then something has to give. I am sinking once more to the level of beggary.
I shall go to bed now, supported by the hothouse fiction that tomorrow night will find them here. In my heart I know this can't possibly happen; not after Charlie's discouraging report. Worst of all, the cold is steepening: it's close to 60 degrees below zero now.
Tuesday was heart-breaking. In a matter-of-fact way Murphy informed me that Poulter was once more back in Little America. Twenty-six miles south, or barely half the distance made good on the first attempt, the clutch had given out entirely. Poulter had turned back and was lucky to reach Little America at all. «It's a pity, but these are
