Weird Antarctica

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 645, 23 April 1929, Page 9

Weird Antarctica

BYRD PARTY FACES WINTER Strange Lights and Sights UNCLOTHED MAN SPRINTS OUTDOORS BY RUSSELL OWEN “T>rv 1 PPy ri Shtt’d, 1928, by the “New York Times” company and the St. Louis i o.st-Uispatcli. All rights for publication reserved throughout the world. Wireless to the New York Timet." Received 9 a.m. BAY OF WHALES, Sunday. FRIDAY ’S blizzard blew itself out, and to-day the weather was .clear and cold at 52 degrees below zero. There is no wind, however, and Commander Byrd and a dozen others walked down the bay ice along the grey line of jagged pressure ridges, trying to get exercise.

W K are on our winter schedule, rising at 5.30 for breakfast, with dinner at 4.30—tw0 meals daily, with coffee between. Bedtime is 10 o’clock and a few hardy souls read for a short time by candle or lantern until their hands are too cold to hold the book, and that Is not long. Dr. Coman, who has been studying the effect of low temperatures on the body, took the opportunity of a cold day and the prospect of a bath to test his own resistance to cold. Much to our amusement, he ran out of doors without clothes and sprinted 200yds to the other house. He ran as fast as he could, and was hitting a good pace at the end. In order to keep from slipping, he had caribou slippers on his feet. Steam rose from him as if from a locomotive going up a grade, and his breath rolled out in clouds. He raised at least 20-mile wind in his run over, and it burned his body like Are. The backs of his fingers and hands were white from being nipped when he dashed into the other house and up to the stove, hut the rest of his body was untouched. When he came back he walked, and as there was no wind he felt no bad effects at all. He even stopped at the thermometer shelter and opened it to see what the temperature was and then strolled in nonchalantly, as if he had been clothed. Then he had his bath. ECHO OF TRAGEDY We had a most successful and i|i.joy able broadcast from Byrd’s New York friends. It ended, however, in an echo of tragedy which deeply affected everyone of us. After the talks the messages from home were read. One of them was to one of the best of our company—a fine young fellow who had listened to his mother speak a short time before, and who had been moved by her evident emotion, as we had all been in sympathy. He was smiling again at the many messages, some of them amusing which were received, when one to him announced the death of his brother. The impersonal sound of it coming from the loud speaker was a great shock to him, and it affected us all. Another man received word of the death of two favourite relatives, so it can be seen that at times we watch with dread the box from which word comes from home. GOING OF THE SUN The whole aspect of our existence here is changing with the going of the sun. In place of the clear white light we have so long been accustomed

to, the landscape is overlaid in the brief Antarctic daytime with dull greys, and streaks of crimson and orange on the horizon. At night there is a grim shadowy light from the stars, or the Aurora is reflected on the snow, and the moon comes up. A monstrous distorted ball of red it is, as if the world were dying. It is dark now long before we go to supper, and last night on the way back a tiny speck of light flared up on the hillside of the Barrier north of the camp. A second after it went out, a bright green glow hurst forth, and the whole section of the Barrier flamed as if with an internal green light. Byrd, Joe Rucker and Van der Veer had gone up to look at a crevasse with a magnesium flare, to see if it can be photographed. They held the flare down in the crack and could see far down into it. Its crystal sides were gleaming with green gems, glowing in darker emerald toward the bottom until, they faded into blackness. But the most astonishing effect was the glow through the ice itself, for the light so penetrated the Barrier that one appeared to be standing on a translucent surface, luminous below with fires of hell (as Byrd said). WEIRD SPECTACLE The glowing green surface seemed to become delicate and fragile, until the men had a feeling that they would fall through, and they stepped gingerly, although reason told them that the snow and ice were as solid as before, and up through the shining crack came green wisps of smoke as if an inferno blazing with cold fire were waiting to consume them. It was a weird and unforgettable sight. The flares had died away and the eyes were becoming accustomed to darkness again, when a barely perceptible red glow appeared on the horizon to the north. “What in the world is that,” said someone. “It can’t be the Aurora so far down.” As it rose, faint streaks of red reached up toward the sky like a light from a burning house away in the country where there are grass and trees and cows. After the hellish light this new mirror of conflagration came with all the sinister aspect of a prophet of evil. The light spread as it rose, colouring the edge of the Barrier, and the top of the bronze disc of the moon appeared. But what a moon —bulbous and mis-shapen, spotted leprously by refraction, with a pillar of fire hissing above it toward the zenith.