1937-12-11 — Page 17

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1937.

18

F

They Won't See Daylight

OUR fur-clad men, standing at the door of a tent, looked into the sky-and, for the last time in five months, gazed on the sun.

It shone only for a fleeting moment, its rays feobly peno- trating an atmosphere in which the temperaturo was just a point above zero.

Then it set and darkness fell.

Those four lone men are not entombed in a mysterious cavern In the bowels of the earth nor shut off from the world in the remote dungeons of a musty prison. They breathe, walk about, and work in the freest alr known-an air In which no germs can live. But they will see no more of the sun for five months than if they were buried in a milue.

T

HEY are the four Soviet scientists who have done what no other humans have ever succeeded in doing- lived at the very top of the world, It is true that they have not stayed exactly at the North Pole, where they first landed, for they and their strange settlement are on an leeflne.

And that floe has drifted with surprising capidity--half a mile an hour much of the time.

Not so many years ago, such an expedition would have been lost to the world in the oblivion of the Arctic night, and the expedition would have been ignorant of the apprehensions its disappearance and silence might have nroused.

To-day finds the intrepid fuur- Ivan D. Papanin, chief of the ex- pedition; Ernest T. Krenkel, radio Eugene K. Fyodorov, operator: astronomer and magnetologist: and Peter P. Shirahov, hydrobiolo- g18-living- snugly in a shelter constructed especially for them of duralumin, Insulated with layers of waterproof rubber, allk and eiderdown and of canvas, with windows of unbreakable glass, against which the fury of Arctic

Till Next Spring

by SPENCER WILLIAMS

Ivan D. Papanin, chief of the expedition which is now doing what no

other human beings have done before,

gales beats vainly, A kerosene stove, which serves also to cook simple meals from speclully made concentrated foods, provide a enough heat to make their tent a warm, if somewhat cramped, home.

"W

ARM" 1s a relative term. however. The temperature within the shelter is actually about freezing point, kept there deliberately to economise the precious supplies of paraffin oil, carefully calculated to last until next spring if sparingly consumed.

Plenty of warm garments and fur covers keep the men's bodies

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warm inside the shelter, Their underwear is made of silk: their stockings, breeches and sweaters of merino wool; their outer garments of deerskin.

Their assortment of footwear consists of large boots made of felt with rubber goloshes fitted on them, high leather boots and deer- skin boots, all of large sizes. They sleep in sleeping-bags made of wolf-akins and elderdown, and they report that they do not feel conscious of the cold, even when the temperature inside the shelter falls as low as 14 degrees Fahren- helt, when their stove is not work- Ing+

Now that the Arctic night has

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descended upon them, their lampa дго kept burning twenty-four hours a day-or, rather, twenty- four hours a night. Anticipating this period, the wintering party brought a largo parcel of books, but they report that though dark- ness has blotted out their view of their own leafioe; they are too busy to find time for reading.

"We can hardly keep up with the job of clearing the snow away from our bases." Papanin has re- ported to Moscow. We work at least 15 hours a day and sleep well"

A

COMPLAINT is that conditions of work have

difficult. They cannot work for n long time outside thele tent, for their faces begin to freeze.

The wires of their radio apparatus look like thick white ropes.from being heavily coated with frost.

The task of Krenkel, the radio operator, has become both doubly dimeuit and doubly important now that the five months' darkness has fallen.

In the morning Krenkel receivea wireless messages for members of the group from their homics in Russia and transmits replies to the familles, dissipating fears-

and anxieties,

Kronkel also sends dally a report showing the position of the expe- dition, the weather and wind con- ditions, the temperature and atmospheric pressure. "Night" to the group means those hours when cheerful musical pro- grammes are waited through the ether.

When steep overtakes the others. Krenkel attends the wireless and keeps watch. Every hour he makes an inspection of the camp, peering through the darkness at familiar heaps of ice-blocks. The stillness is broken only by the sound of ice eracking somewhere in the dis- tance: It is the duty of the "watch" to keep an eye out for cracks in their icefloo.

о

NE ominous crack in the icefield, near the expe- dition's camp, already nearly 400 yards wide and several miles long, appeared a week or two ago, and the scientists are giving it their watchful attention to see if it shows a disposition to enlarge.

Plans for a hasty evacuation have been carefully lald should that prove urgently necessary.

But premature alarm is not al- lowed to upset a routine which keeps every one of the four occu- pled longer than the normal work day.

Shirshov, the biologist, has the most exacting tasks. His day is spent over a hole in the fee, accu- mulating materials for his studies. his hands blue from long exposure to icy water.

The men pause in their work for dinner in the mid-after- noon, afterwards rest an hour. before continuing their labours.

When they tire, which is usually about 10 p.m. thoy drink tea, put on their radio earphones and are linked with the world beyond the barrier of the Arctic silence,

-To-day's Thought- THEIR fame shrinks not to names end dates on volive stone, the prey of time.

-W. II. VENABLE,

Glacial Camp Discovered

A camp of the glacial period (30- 35 thousand years before our ега) has been discovered in the Don river valley in the vicinity of the village Kostensky by an expedition, of the Academy of Selences. A large num- ber of implements and flint articles have been discovered.

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