THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3239, 12 April 1916, Page 67

THE WEEK.

So the Aurora has returned, after more than a year in Antarctica. It gives one quite a curious sensation to pick up one's morning paper one day last week and find a whole page of it, adorned with big headlines, devoted to something that was not war news, for the great over-master-ing topic has so filled our minds that we had almost forgotten the existence of Sir Ernest Shackleton's present Antarctic expedition. A trans-Antarctic expedition it is called, for, as you will remember, his object was to cross the Antarctic continent from the South American side, and end up in M'Murdo Sound, from which he and Captain Scott had started on their other journeys. It is a thing that I never cease to marvel at and to admire—this love of hardship and danger for its own sake, this venturing forth into the unknown, which has carried men, particularly Englishmen, to the very uttermost ends of the earth. Reading the accounts of previous expeditions and the hardships endured—the cold and the hunger, sickness and frostbite, and unutterable physical weariness—you would think that one such experience -was enough for any man. And yet they go back again and again, so long as there is something left undone which they have not yet accomplished. "The men who go South are driven on by a torment of their souls," says Harry Rames in Mason's story, "The Turnstile," in which this insistent and irresistible call of the South forms the principal theme. Rames is a man of great energy and great ambitions. He means to get on in the world, to do things, and purely for the sake of advertisement, though naturally he keeps that to himself, he organises an Antarctic expedition, and sets out to reach the Pole. That he fails matters little to him. He has at least succeeded in bringing his name before the world. He comes home, goes into politics, marries the heroine, Cynthia Daventry, and seems to be on the threshold of a successful career. He has no intention of going back to complete what he had begun in the South. That was merely an incident in his life, a means to an end. Then one of his old officers organises an expedition himself, and comes to Rames to say good-bye, and old memories begin to awaken. He becomes restless and ill at ease. The political life into which he and Cynthia had entered so whole-heartedly loses its Bavour. On his way to make an important speech in Parliament the wireless on the roof of the- Admiralty catches his eye, and he sees in thought all the ships of tho world sending their messages home, and amongst them his own old ship—"a little full-rigged, black-hulled ship quite alone- on a silent sea—the 'Perhaps,' reeling down with . all her canvas drawing from her sky-sail to her spanker—reeling down with the water breaking from her broad stern bows into the mists of the South." The call becomes clearer and clearer, and one night, moved by an irresistible impulse, he gets out his charts of the Antarctic and studies once again

the tracks of previous explorers. "lie bent over his map, and across it, as across the table of a camera abscura, lie saw moving, in miniature and brilliantly defined, the ships of the men who had sailed to the South. James Cook's two vessels, the Resolution and the Adventure, crossed the Antarctic Circle, as it seemed, underneath his eves—the first of all the ships that were 'ever built to sail upon these waters. Bellingshausen, of Kronstadt, came next, and dropped his anchor under the shelter of Peter I Island, and gave to it its name. He was followed by the whaling captains, each choosing his own line —great navigators inspired by a great and spirited firm—Weddeil and Biscoe in their brigs, Ballcny in his schooner. The later ships of the scientific expeditions, under D'Urville, of France, and Wilkes, of Chesapeake Bay, moved southwards in the track of the whaling captains, and close upon their heels James Ross from England with the Erebus and the Terror burst for the first time in the history of the world through the ice-pack into the open sea beyond and sailed from west to east along the great ice-barrier. There were other lines where the Challenger had sailed, and the official expeditions; and there was yet another—the longest of all the lines upon the chart —a line stretching out to a harbour never visited before, and against that line, in tiny letters, was printed 'Rames.' Finally, that he may keep his bargain with Cynthia and rise to fame in the little world of politics, he locks the drawer on his chart and drops the key into the river; but he cannot lock up his visions, and goes about in torment of soul, for the words he had lightly spoken of others have become true of himself." Of the silent battle between himself and Cynthia, and of how it ended, it would take too long to tell here; but the last chapter sees him on the bridge of an auxiliary barcpaentine of 150 tons steaming towards the Needles and the open sea on a three years' voyage to the South. The call was too strong to be denied, and. he had set out to accomplish his uncompleted work.

It is the same with the real men as with the author's creation. They hear a voice calling them, whispering always of

Something hidden—go and find it! and they just have to go. How Shackleton has fared in his search they could not tell us, those Rip Van Winkles on the Aurora, plunged suddenly back into civilisation after so long* an absence. Think of what has happened since they went down into the Antarctic in January of last year. The whole Gallipoli campaign was begun and ended while they were away—not to speak of Zeppelin raids, the submarine campaign, and a host of other terrible things. The war they expected to be over long ago is still raging in full fury, and while it has been going on their comrades in the South have been waging another battle against the forces of Nature, pitting their tiny human strength and all their skill and knowledge against an enemy, mighty indeed, and relentless : but not so cruel as the Hun in his frightfulness. How their fight has gone we cannot tell till the Endurance reaches Buenos Aires, or a relief ship goes down in the spring; but we shall be glad indeed to know. ELIZABETH.