A Victim of the Aurora Read Online Free

frankly proud of ourselves. You don’t have to be told that in those days people weren’t always examining their motives in volunteering for such projects as the Stewart expedition. If we were asked why we had offered ourselves for at least a year and a half of isolation far more intense than the isolation of astronauts in command modules, we would have said we were doing it because we loved adventure or because it was a manly thing to do. They would have been the orthodox replies for that age. We didn’t question whether our withdrawal to Antarctica meant we were insecure in the real world, or frightened of women, or latent homosexuals. So we believed in duty and believed as well that what we were doing was sane and not suspect. The fact was that we were tough and efficient – most of us – and deserved some praise from Sir Eugene Stewart. Yet élites are very hard to achieve, since those who seek them have one way or another suspended their belief in original sin.
    It had been a good party. After the entrées of fried seal liver and galantine of penguin we ate roast beef and dumplings and there was much wine. The hut was hung with sledding flags and naval pennants, and beneath them the speeches and the arguments took place. The arguments were diverse – on politics and rock formations, initiated by my friend Barry Fields, a red-haired Australian; on the superlative qualities of Scandinavian girls, sentimentally initiated by Par-axel Beck; on the relative value of ponies and dogs in polar conditions, initiated and carried on by Captain Mead, the pony man, and Harry Webb, the dog expert from Northern Quebec. Isaac Goodman, Waldo Warwick, Harry Kittery argued about the geological history of the continent – Goodman was already thinking in terms of continental drift. Eugene Stewart and John Troy debated Germany’s naval intentions, Paul Gabriel and I questioned the impact of photography on painting; Dryden and Hoosick were probably talking about fish, art or Italy; the Rev. Brian Quincy and Norman Coote listened to Henneker tell scandalous stories about peers, actresses, industrialists and courtesans. And, at a point near the door to the sailors’ quarters (the expedition was run on a naval basis and the petty officers and ABs had separate living space), Peter Sullivan, the maker of early movies, held a flash above a tripod-mounted camera and called on us to hold our positions.
    After the speeches – I’ve already referred to Stewart’s – everyone brought out his especial luxury, the item he had brought with him in his pack to celebrate this deepest point of the polar year. Beck had a bottle of Schnapps. As he poured the first glass he said, ‘My friends, I am certain of it that if I offered you all a glass it would do no one much good and that I would only be a hypocritic which Christianity forbids me to be. Therefore I will drink this personally myself and toast the each of you once at a time.’ Which he then went on to do. Red-headed Barry Fields had a half-dozen bottles of his native Australia’s heavy beer. He brought a dozen to Antarctica with him, concealed in the ponies’ fodder, but half a dozen of them exploded when the contents froze. He once confessed to me that he knew little of cold climates and had never seen snow until he came to England a year before the expedition left the Thames. Now he offered Stewart one of the bottles, but Stewart declined. Henneker had Highland malt whisky and the Rev. Quincy three Filipino cigars. Hoosick, who did not drink, produced peanut brittle and Kittery put some liqueur chocolates on the table. And so it went.
    Then ‘the men’ – as Stewart called his sailors – came through the door into our quarters. Everyone toasted the cook, Walter O’Reilly, who was awarded a chair by the stove and sat in it smiling, a pint of bitter in his hand. The pony handler Nikolai performed a dance and sang