Arrowsmith Diary (continued)
11th June – Malcolm, Nick and I have Blaiklock to ourselves at the moment which is very pleasant as we are good friends and the hut is less cramped. We get up at 11 and go to bed correspondingly late and, since the weather is bad, we have been doing a lot of cooking. I have made macaroni cheese, curry, risotto, apple pie and fruit cake with varying degrees of success but all a welcome change from meat-bar! Nick has produced excellent wholemeal bread from a recipe sent over the radio from Stonington. Malcolm is a pancake and drop-scone expert. Unfortunately, the paraffin stove must have been salvaged from the Ark and is temperamental, fumey and not very hot. But beggars can’t be choosers.
One evening we walked along the coast to look for seal since our supplies of Nutty are limited and there is no knowing how long we may be stuck here. Malc took his leader Elphine and I took Morag. They behaved just like pets at home, running on ahead and then rushing back for reassurance. I wouldn’t dare let any of the dogs off here, though. They would come back but in their own good time, probably after rifling the seal-pile and a fight or two.
Today was still and clear and we walked to the top of the ridge behind the hut carrying skis. There was a magnificent sky – deep orange behind Pourquoi Pas and Adelaide, a flaming scarlet over the Reid Glacier – and we had a fine view across Scree Cove to Xmas Pud (Mount Sandringham). The 1500 feet of descent gave us an exhilarating ski-run on a superb surface that flattered our skiing.
Last night Sonsie of the Ladies, left behind by Gwynn, produced seven pups. We took it in turns to get up, knock their heads on a rock and drop them into the tide-crack between sea-ice and shore. It seemed a shame but apparently they have no place in the carefully calculated breeding programme….
14th June – Malcolm and I killed four seal today and dragged them back to the hut behind the sledges (Nick is hors de combat with piles).It’s a loathsome business. I don’t mind gutting them, it can be done swiftly and neatly with a sharp knife and a seal-hook. In fact, I find it fascinating having never studied the insides of an animal before. It is the actual shooting I find horrible as there is no element of hunting involved. The seals bore holes in the ice and come up to lie about on the surface asleep. Sometimes you can fire the .45 at point black range before they even wake up. More often they roll onto their backs waving their flippers, valve-like nostrils dilating and contracting rapidly in alarm, blinking at you with huge liquid eyes that seem to be all pupil. They rarely make any attempt to escape and are pathetically slow and clumsy when they do. We have to kill them but I don’t pretend to enjoy it.
18th June – Our pleasant, lazy existence continues. We have killed more seal out in the fjord and now have a stock-pile. The weather is still none too good but we pass the time enjoyably, skiing on a perfect nursery slope behind the hut and chopping up the seals into feeds as we need them (the meat as well as the bones needs an axe once frozen). Mid-winter goodwill messages have been coming in, via Stonington, from French, American, South African and Japanese bases as well as the other BAS bases. Stanley are running a special request programme on the day. We have asked for Island in the Sun to be played for friends and for ‘our neighbours at Stonington who unfortunately cannot be with us’, from the three of us and our teams.
A red-letter night, my first wash and change of clothes for almost three months. It’s not as unhygienic as it sounds. I haven’t been feeling at all dirty and none of us seem to smell. It must be something to do with the lack of humidity. I have been saving my sparkling white, clean vest, pants and longjohns for mid-winter and they certainly feel very nice!
23rd June – At last we are having a spell of cold, clear weather, ideal for sea-ice to form and filling the sky with the pastel shades characteristic of Edward Wilson’s watercolours. We are not really very far south (67degrees lat.) and have reasonable daylight between 10 and 4. The sun still reddens the very top of Arronax on Pourquoi Pas and for the next six months now the days will be getting longer.
Neil, Brian and Gwynn arrived back yesterday, lowering sledges and dogs down a fifteen foot ice-cliff at the bottom of the Reid glacier. (A few days ago, when we were expecting them back, we saw the light of a tent in the middle of the Reid but it turned out they were 25 miles away at the time…)
Rob Collister, GA Stonington