BACK FROM ICE PACK

Hokitika Guardian, 14 May 1929, Page 8

BACK FROM ICE PACK

SHIVERS IN CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO, April 17. A little group of a iIo/ami men liudclloil on the deck of the liner Tahiti just after sunrise, waiting for the doctors to pass them through quarantine anti the Customs inspectors to look over their baggage. A brisk sea wind swept the deck, and the chill of a. typical San Francisco April morning was on them. ‘•Golly, hut it\s cold!” shuddered a tall youth with a southern accent. ‘•That wind cuts through you like a. knife.” The othois chattered their agreement and pulled overcoats closer about themselves. They were members of the Antarctic expedition of Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd and they had just returned to the United States Irom “Little America,” the tiny settlement dug out of the ice of ages tlmt surrounds the forbidding continent on which tlic South Pole is located. “Cold? Of course we’re cold,” snapped Lieutenant Harry Adams, leader of the party. lie was chietf officer of the auxiliary barque City of New York, a ship of the Byrd expedition that carried to Little America the tri-motored Ford monoplane in which the commander will fly over the Pole next summer; “You see, this is a. different kind of cold front what tho men are used to,” explained Lieutenant Adams. “Down there' on the ice pack the men worked with nothing on above their waists but a suit of B.Y.IVs in weather Ilf) and 40 degrees below zero, hut that’s a lot different from standing out on the deck of a lugger like this waiting for something to happen. Why shouldn’t they he cold? Brr-rr-rr!” The comparison of the Antarctic temperature with California’s miiohvaunted climate afforded a great surprise to the newspaper, representatives of the Golden Stale when they encountered the returning exploration nai'tv at the Golden Gate of the Bay of San Francisco. REGALED WITH ,ICE-CREAM. The lieutenant and his eleven companions were from the City of New York and the steamer Eleanor Bolling, ilte second ship of the Byrd expedition, and it was mentioned that these two ships will remain idle at Dunedin, New Zealand, until next autumn —which naturally is springtime in the countries under the world —when they will returh to the 4b companions they left to dig themselves in at Little America for the hardship of the Antarctic winter, which conies during the same months as . Big America’s summer. IKacli' of the twelve men who chose to spend this holiday in .the United States was full of praise for Commando'* Byrd and his hntiilling of the expedition, and all nodded in agreement when Lieutenant Adams termed their leader “the greatest and most beloved explorer the world has over known.” Practically all of them expressed their determination to return when the City of New York braves tho ice-pack next (September or October to go back to the' exiles in Little America.

These men were the first who had scon Little America to return to tlie U.S.A. to tell about it, and all were filled with tales of the epic struggles undergone by Commander Byrd and his crew to oistniblisli their foothold •in the Antarctic Continent.

They were met at the dock when the Union Steamship Company’s Tahiti reached San Francisco by Robert S. Broyor, Los Angeles automobile man, who represents the Byrd expedition on tlie Pacific Coast, and escorted by him to the Manx Hotel, where reservations had been made for the entire group. A few hours later Brcycr was host to the* men at the palatial Hotel Mark Hopkins at luncheon, and hearty guffaws went from all hands when the waiters brought on the dessert—ice-cream I “ga—ay, have a heart, Mr Brover; wo ain’t used to chilly things like these,” exploded Cook Creagh, the comedian of the party. “Down where we live it never gets colder than 70 degrees below zero.” “Yeah, and if you want to make us feel right at home, turn on a “ouplo of electric fans,” nut in Steward (ireason. “That’ll make us think of those 120-mile an hour zephyrs down there on the ice.” CHEERFUL AI>VF,NTURF,RS. A cheerful, laughing crew, adventurers all, and with a collection of intimate personal jokes that left an outsider bewildered at their thrusts at each other, they were plied with many queries by the Yankee interviewers, especially their escape from being frozen in down in the South Pole regions. “It was a narrow squeak,” commented Lieutenant Adams. “A few hours, or even min-

utes, might have meant that wc »ou.i<l have been frozen in for the winter, with little enough provisions and not nearly enough coal. You see, wc unloaded all our coal except just what we figured would get us hack to New Zealand, so the commander and his men would have enough for the winter. And if wc had to spend the i\ inter there, too, there would not have been enough to go round.” The returning pilgrims spoke admiringly of the SO dogs which Byrd used to transport his supplies over the ice barrier to his camp. “Those dogs are. just great,” commented Frank Woolfgang, of Paterson, New Jersey, the aviation mechanic. -“They are just like people, and a parson gets to like or dislike the particular ones like ho does a man.” “lU* member the time I tried to pipe down that big mutt of a wolf?” laughed Max B. Uoehning, the marine engineer. “You sec, that dog was about three-quarters wolf and lie made the darn (lest noises you ever heard when wo wore trying to sleep. i went on deck one night—-the sun was shining as bright as ever, but it was night all the same—and tried to shut him up. “That plagued dog near took a leg off me. He did take part of my pants, at that. T took a club to him, but even that didn’t do any good. Tie finally won the argument, all right, and then howled, all night just to show me I couldn’t boss him.” TR AGEDY OF WON DEB-DOG. The tragedy of tin* wonder-dog, Dinty, leader of one of the teams, brought a. sigh from the men. The story of how Dinty, realising that his pulling days were over and he could no longer lead the pack, crawled away to die by himself, has been told in great and simple language by correspondents recording the doings of the expedition “down under.” “The commander is a great man," said Gyle 10. Womack, who joined the expedition to run away from the business of lieing known as “Mr Itutli Elder,” after his wife dropped into tlie Atlantic-and motion picture fame—on a projected trans-Atlantic ' flight. “And I’m sure going hack in the fall if they want me,” lie added. The members of> <■ the expedition remained in San Francisco only n lew plays' and tjieii; returned .to their homes in various parts' of the United States, and wilbikwait.ia summons to rejoin the ships next autumn. While in San Francisco they avidh drank in all the wonder of an American city, which they diad not seen for more than six,; months, and learned all the news they had been denied. “How did Texas Guiiian make out in her trial?” “What kind of baseball do they play out- hero?” “Gosh, look at those girls? I’d almost forgotten what a pretty ankle looks like.” “How’s prohibition coming out here?” These were some of the thousand and one questions they asked, which transferred the interviewer into the. interviewed. But not a man of them had'any answer but one to make to the question, “What do you think of Commander Byrd?” Always the answer was shot hack in no uncertain terms': “He’s the greatest man that ever lived.”