"Saturday, February 17 - A very terrible day.
Evans looked a little better after a good sleep, and declared, as he always did,
that he was quite well. He started in his place on the traces, but half an hour
later worked his ski shoes adrift, and had to leave the sledge. The surface was
awful, the soft recently fallen snow clogging the ski and runners at every step,
the sledge groaning, the sky overcast, and the land hazy. We stopped after about
one hour, and Evans came up again, but very slowly. Half an hour later he dropped out again on the same plea. He asked Bowers to lend him a piece of string. I cautioned him to come on as quickly as he could, and he answered cheerfully as I thought. We had to push on, and the remainder of us were forced to pull very hard, sweating heavily. Abreast the Monument Rock we stopped, and seeing Evans a long way astern, I camped for lunch. There was no alarm at first, and we prepared tea and our own meal, consuming the latter.
After lunch, and Evans still not appearing, we looked out, to see him still afar off. By this time we were alarmed, and all four started back on ski. I was first to reach the poor man and shocked at his appearance; he was on his knees with clothing disarranged, hands uncovered and frostbitten, and a wild look in his eyes. Asked what was the matter, he replied with a slow speech that he didn't know, but thought he must have fainted. We got him on his feet, but after two or three steps he sank down again. He showed every sign of complete collapse. Wilson, Bowers, and I went back for the sledge, whilst Oates remained with him.
When we returned he was practically unconscious, and when we got him into the tent quite comatose. He died quietly at 12.30 A.M. On discussing the symptoms we think he began to get weaker just before we reached the Pole, and that his downward path was accelerated first by the shock of his frostbitten fingers, and later by falls during rough travelling on the glacier, further by his loss of all confidence in himself. Wilson thinks it certain he must have injured his brain by a fall.
It is a terrible thing to lose a companion in this way, but calm reflection
shows that there could not have been a better ending to the terrible anxieties
of the past week. Discussion of the situation at lunch yesterday shows us what a
desperate pass we were in with a sick man on our hands at such a distance from
home." Taken from: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/scott.htm
The Terra Nova expedition had been gifted many things by wellwishers, including coal, cigars, plum puddings (?) and even a piano. In this piece I am describing a woman being shown around the ship before deperature (as they often were), and standing at the piano. I have used the piano as a metaphor for the declining mental state of Evans, who is with her at that time:
The Piano Man
“The wood will warp, sat out in the elements like this,” she thought, “the moist conditions will wreck it.” It’ll look the same, of course, on the outside but the workings will deform. The ice will work into its belly and fatten the dampeners, and the frost will make the strings creep.
The effect will be gradual of course, changing ever so slightly over time. Getting almost imperceptibly flatter and flatter until one day it’ll sound so horribly out of tune that you’ll wonder how you hadn’t picked up on it before. You don’t notice these things though, not until the string is stretched so tight that it’s likely to snap at any moment.
She felt sorry for this piano.
She took off a glove, ran her hand over the varnished mahogany, before lifting up the fall and pressing a key.
The note sounded out, as clear as a bell. A nearby pony looked up lazily from its hay, regarding her with its listless eyes before returning to his meal.
She looked up at him; a big oaf in a sailor outfit, smiling down at her.
“You like the piano, miss?” he said.
“Yes, very much so,” she answered, before gently shutting its lid.
x
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