CAPTAIN SCOTT’S LAST ADVENTURE.

Hokitika Guardian, 10 January 1922, Page 3

CAPTAIN SCOTT’S LAST ADVENTURE.

HAIRBREATH ESCAPES AND TRAGEDY. THRILLING STORY BY “EVANS OF THE BROKE.” Capt. E. R. C. ft. Evans, (famous before the war as second in command of Scott’s Antarctic Expedition, and in the war as the man w T ho in the Broke, aided only by the Swift, defeated six German destroyers), in “South with Scott” tells of his part in Captain Scott’s last noble and tragic adventure.

It is a great story, admirably rendered, fuller of incident, and hair-breadth escapes than any romance, and when it reaches the culminating episode, deeply moving. When Scott, as he lay dying wrote: “Tilings have oome out against us,” not overyone understood what lie meant. Captain Evans makes it clear. An. inserutinable run of illluck dogged the expedition from the start to the last tremendous scene. Scott started ill supplied with funds; he had almost to beg his way to the Antarctic; and lie entered on the last journey handicapped. Pbnies died, motor-sledges failed; even the dogs went wrong, and there were too few of them. With each mischance lie must have known that the margin of chance in his favour was narowing; the crowning trial was the knowledge that Amundson was making’ a dash for the South Pole bv another route:

Captain Scott took it very bravely: better than any of us, I think, for he had done already such wonderful work down there. I was he who initiated and founded Antarctic sledge travelling: it was fie who had blazed the trail; and we were very, very sorry for him.” THE AWFUL SILENCE.

Capt. Evans gives many pictures of the dreadful grimness of Antarctic scenery-: “How sinister and relentless the western mountains looked, how cold and forgiving the foothills, and how ashy grey the sullen icefoots that gird this sad, frozen land. . . .The Barrier in its bleak loneliness is probably the most desolate portion of the earth’s surface, with the possible exception of the high plateau which forms the ice cap of the great Antarctic mountain ranges.”

Everything there was weird: “We wore marching, as it were, under the shadow of Erebus, the great Antarctic volcano, and on this nevCr-to-be-forgot ten night the Southern Ifights (a form of Aurora) played for hours. If for nothing else, it was worth making such a sledge journey to witness the display. First vertical shafts ascended in a fail of electric flame, and then the shafts all merged into a filmy, pale chrome sheet. "Tliis faded and intensified alternatively, and. then in an instant disappeared. The awful splendour of this majestic vision gave us all a most eerie

feeling.” The loneliness and stillness were almost insupportable: “The awful absence of life struck strong notes within us. Even our feet mTifie no noise at all, clad in their soft fur boots. . . The silence was ghastly, for beyond the sound of our voices and the groaning of the sledgo runners when the surface was bad there was no sound whatever to remind ns of the outer world.”

PRAYERS ANSWERED. “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of,” wrote the Victorian poet; and here are two strange incidents which bear out the words. In a mid-winter preliminary journey which Dr Wilson and a .small party carried out, a blizzard began with hurricane force for two days: “The second day was Dr Wilson’s birthday : he told me afterwards that had the gale not abated when it did all three men must have perished. Wilson prayed hard that they might he spared. His pray or was answered, it is true, but before another year had passed two of tliis courageous little band lost their lives.”

The second befell Capt Evans himself near the foot of the ieefalls' of the Beardinore Glacier in the Antarctic Mountains. He was inarching north with the little party that had left 1 Scott when lie made the final dash south, and he became involved in a. maze of crevasses, with the certainty of death unless lie could find a way out. ‘‘The three of us sat on the sledge: We were done, our throats were dry and we efmM scarcely speak. There was no wind, and the sun slowly crept towards the southern meridian, dear cut’ in the steel-blue sky. We should have gone mad with another day like this, and there were times wlun we came perilously close to being insane. Sr.metliingi had to he done. 1 got up and said: ‘I am going to look for a way out; wo

can’t go on.’ ” He “moved along a series of icebridges,” and i cached the lower slopes and a great valley of ice. “I stood still and surveyed the wonderful valley, and then fell on my knees and prayed to God that a way out would be shown me. Then T sprang to my feet and hurried on boldly. Suddenly I saw before me the smooth, shining bed of the glacier itself, and away td the northwest was the curious reddish rock under which the Mid Glacier Depot (laid by the party on its advance) had been placed. My feelings hardly hear sotting down. I was overcome with emotion ,but my prayer was answered arid we were saved.”

OROSS-BAR OF HELL. The match down the icefield had indeed been a terrifying ordeal. The party were so weak in numbers and strength and so uncertain of the way that they had to take the most hopeless risks: “At about 8 pan. we were travelling on a ridge between two stupendous open gulfs, and we found a connecting bridge of ice which stretched obliquely across. To cross by it was,

to say the least, a precarious proceeding. But it would save us a mile or two and in our tired state this was worth considering. After a minute s rest wo placed the sledge on this iocbridge, and, as Crean (one of the party) described it afterwards, ‘We went along the cross-bar to the H of Hell. It was not at all misnamed either, for Lashly, who went ahead, dared not walk upright. He actually sat astride the bridge and was paid out at the end of our Alpine rope.” When he had reached a firm point Evans and Crean followed with the sledge on the knife-edge: “The sledge rested on the narrow bridge which was indeed so shaped that the crest only admitted of the runners resting one oil each side of it. Crean and I, facing one another, held on to the sledge sides, balancing the whole concern. It was one of the most exciting moments of our lives. Neither of us spoke nor did we look down. A false movement might have precipitated the whole gang and the sledge itself into the blueblack space of awful death beneath. . . The sledge weighed 4001 b.” At another point they had to glissade down in the sledge as their only hope of escape—to trust themselves to the sledge over ice which they did not know: “The speed at one point must have been 60 miles an hour down a steep blue ice slope; to brake was impossible, for the sledge lmd taken charge. One or other of us may have attempted to check the sledge with Ins foot, but to stop it in any other way would have meant a broken leg. We held on for our lives. Suddenly it seemed to spring into the air; wc hat left the ice and shot over one vanning crevasse before wo had known of its existence almost.” The.v were shaken and bruised when the sledge struck the ice ridge beyond but lost nothing save » ski-stick which fell into “the great blue-black chasm. Capt. Evans’s life was only saved by the devotion of Ids two comrades; on this fearful journey he was seized with scurvy, but they flatly refused to abandon him, as lie urged them to do. “One day I fainted when striving to start a‘march. Crean and Lashly picked me up and Crean thought I was dead. His hot tears fell on my face, and as I came to I gave a weak kind of laugli.” . . Crean inarched off on a journey o appalling risk to obtain help, while Lashly remained with Evans in a tent on the ice.