Alone in Antarctica | The Last Man | 3

0:00Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of Against the Odds early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. A listener note. Against the Odds uses dramatizations that are based on true events. Some elements, including dialogue, may be invented, but everything is based on research. The following episode contains depictions of violence and is not suitable for everyone. Please be advised.

0:34Douglas Mawson stirs a bowl of bone broth with a spoon. The thin soup is for his friend and fellow explorer, Xavier Mertz, who lies shivering next to him inside their makeshift tent. Mawson lifts a spoonful and brings it to Mertz's lips. Eat, Xavier. It's good for you. Mertz swings his arm and knocks the bowl out of Mawson's hand. The broth spills everywhere. No, boss. No more broth. No more ginger. I won't eat her. Ginger was the last of the huskies to survive their expedition. But she had grown too weak to haul the sledge. So the starving men had no choice but to butcher her for food, just as they'd done with the other dogs.

1:19But Ginger was Mertz's favorite and Mawson knows it's no use trying to force him to eat broth made from her bones. Yes, okay, I understand. Just rest. It's around 5 p.m. on January 7th, 1913. Mertz is suffering from frostbite and dysentery, an intestinal infection that causes severe diarrhea. The dysentery and malnutrition have driven Mertz to delirium. He says the dog meat is making him sick, so he's refused to eat it. He's accused Mawson of thinking him weak and afraid, and at one point Mertz even bit some skin off his own frostbitten finger. Mawson patched it up. Mawson pulls back a corner of the tent canvas and peeks outside.

2:06The Antarctic summer sun hangs low in the sky, casting an eerie light across the icy crags. He had hoped to sledge today. They have just eight days to get back to Cape Denison, eight days until their supply ship is supposed to leave and head back to Australia, with or without them. But the two men still have a hundred miles to go. He turns back to Mertz, who has fallen into another fitful sleep. Yesterday, Mertz had talked about making penguin egg omelets for them, but Mawson realizes now that that will never happen. Mertz is too far gone. His journey will end here, on this barren patch of ice.

2:47Just then, Mertz lunges out of his sleeping bag. Before Mawson can act, Mertz grabs a flimsy yet valuable tent pole and snaps it in half. Part of the tent sags to the ground. Mawson grabs Mertz and forces him back into his sleeping bag, where the sick man rants uncontrollably. They're killing me! They're killing me! Mawson tries to soothe him. He pulls Mertz's sleeping bag up to his chin. He holds his hand and strokes his hair. Xavier! Xavier! Rest! You need rest! Mertz dozes off, and Mawson takes the chance to lie down. Deep into the night, Mawson suddenly wakes. He's not sure why. All is quiet.

3:29He leans over to Mertz and touches his face. It's ice cold. Mertz is not breathing. Three weeks ago, Belgrave Ninnis vanished down a crevasse. And now, Mertz is dead too. Mawson lies back, feeling a tear slide down his cheek. He tries to focus on his situation. It'll take him at least ten days to cover the one hundred miles. Even if he somehow makes it there in one piece, he'll miss the ship, and he's almost out of food. There are no dogs to pull the sledge, and there's no one left to speak with, to laugh with, to consult with, to warn him of dangers. Douglas Mawson is now completely alone.

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5:31From Wondery, I'm Mike Corey, And this is Against the Odds.

5:43In November 1912, Douglas Mawson, Belgrave Ninnis, and Xavier Mertz and their team of sled dogs set out across Antarctica. Their goal was to journey 350 miles southeast into uncharted territory and then return to their expedition's home base at Cape Denison. But 315 miles into their journey, Ninnis and his sledge fell into a seemingly bottomless crevasse. Nearly all of the party's food and supplies were lost with him. Mawson and Mertz began the long trek back, but with nothing to eat, all their dogs slowly died. Then, when Mertz also perished, Mawson was left alone. He'd have to rely on ingenuity, luck, and sheer will if he was going to make it back to the base alive.

6:34And he was racing against the clock. His expedition's supply ship, the Aurora, was set to leave on January 15th. If Maussin missed it, he'd be stuck in Antarctica for another winter. This is Episode 3, The Last Man.

7:00Douglas Mawson lifts his serrated pocket knife to the side of his sledge and starts sawing. He grunts with the effort, accusing such a small knife to cut through such thick wood, but it's all he's got, and he needs to cut the sledge in half if he's going to be able to pull it by himself. It's the late afternoon of January 8th, 1913, the day after the death of Xavier Mertz. He was in such agony that Mawson is grateful for the mercy of his passing. Mawson spent much of the morning cutting blocks of snow to create a kind of mausoleum for Mertz's body. Then he wrote a note describing the deaths of Ninnis and Mertz and their bravery during the journey for anyone who might find the memorial.

7:48He slipped it into Mertz's sleeping bag, along with photographic plates of Mertz and Ninnis. Then he dragged the sleeping bag holding Mertz outside the tent and covered it with the snow blocks. By the time he finished, Mawson was tired beyond belief. His muscles ache and his skin is raw from head to toe. His face is covered in boils, and all the cuts and bruises he's suffered the past few weeks have stopped healing. But he doesn't have time to rest or feel pity for himself. He keeps sawing, moving his knife back and forth, back and forth, as if in a trance. It takes another hour, but he eventually cuts the 11-foot-long sledge in half.

8:31Then he starts going through his few remaining supplies, ready to toss anything that isn't completely necessary. As he sorts, he picks up Mertz's diary. He can't afford its weight, but he can't bring himself to toss it. Mertz's family back in Switzerland would want it. He places it in the keep pile. Mawson has no illusions that the journey back to Cape Denison will be easy. He doesn't have enough food, and there are no seals or other animals to hunt along the way. But even if his chances are slim, he wants to keep moving. At the very least, if he dies closer to the cape, there's a better chance someone will find his body.

9:12and the party's diaries. He looks up at the sky. Dark clouds are gathering. An icy wind cuts through his clothes. Even the weather is against him.

9:30Douglas Mawson is pulling his sledge on all fours, crawling through an area full of Sastrugi. The sharp ridges of ice formed by the howling polar winds. The Sastrugi are so uneven and slippery, he's forced to crawl. He's in a dog harness, which digs into his raw skin. His muscles ache, and his fingers are black from frostbite. Every move is agony, but he's vowed to go ten miles today. It's the morning of January 11th, 1913. It's been three days since Savior Mertz died, leaving Mawson on his own. He had wanted to set out again right away, but fierce winds and blinding snow forced him to shelter in his tent for two days.

10:14Now he's finally back on the move, but the going is tough. He slips on the ice, and the sledge nearly tips over. He stands to readjust the harness, but a sharp pain shoots up from his foot. He drops to all fours again and tries to put more weight on his knees, but the foot pain only worsens. Both his feet feel strangely squishy, as if his boots are packed with molasses. The sun peeks out from behind the clouds, and he stops to rest. He takes off his boots to examine his feet. Between the cold and the fatigue, he hasn't looked at them in weeks. He slowly removes one pair of soaking wet socks, then another, and finally his last pair.

11:01He cannot believe what he sees. The thick skin on the soles of both his feet has completely fallen off, and his socks are filled with a watery discharge from the raw tissue underneath. Mawson realizes that's what caused the squishy feeling. Mawson wonders how he'll even be able to walk, but if he wants to survive, he has no choice. He smears the exposed tissue with lanolin, then arranges the separated skin under each foot to use as a cushion. Then he wraps his feet in bandages and puts on the three pairs of wool socks he removed, plus three more. Each foot is now encased in six socks. He jams his feet into his boots, then straps on his crampons.

11:50The Sastrugi have given way to a flat surface, and he hoists himself up to a standing position. He puts the harness on, and he trudges forward. All the padding dulls the pain, but each step still hurts. He's covered just one mile so far today. Nine more to go.

12:20Mawson bolts upright in his sleeping bag, awakened from a deep sleep by a loud banging sound. It sounds like gunshots? For a minute, he wonders if he's hallucinating. But then he hears it again. Now fully awake, he remembers where he is. It can't be gunfire. There's nobody for miles around. Still, the cracks startle him each time. It's January 13th. Just two days until the Aurora is scheduled to leave Cape Denison and return to Australia. But with more than 80 miles still to go, all hope of making it to the Cape in time is gone. Even so, he's going to keep moving anyway. I mean, who knows? Maybe the boat will be delayed.

13:06Maybe men from the other expeditions will be late too. No matter what, he can't give up. Mawson reminds himself that he is making good progress. He's traveled about five miles each of the past two days, according to his sledge meter, far short of his goal of 10 miles, but the shorter, lighter sledge is helping him move faster, despite his ruined feet. He's now camped close to what he's been calling Mertz Glacier, the glacier closest to Cape Denison. He's decided to name another one Ninnis Glacier. He wanted to honor his two dead companions. Sometimes, it's like their ghosts push him forward. At other times, thoughts of Mertz and Ninnis remind him how very alone he actually is.

13:51He imagines himself as a man in prehistoric times, or a space traveler alone on Mars. He hears more sounds like gunshots, but now he's becoming less startled each time. In the tent, he tries to ignore his many discomforts. His feet are worse than ever. Any movement causes discomfort. The banging resumes, and Mawson winces through the pain as he forces on his boots and goes outside. He wants to see if he can determine what's causing these godforsaken sounds. Outside the tent, the wind feels like a thousand icy needles on his face. The sounds return, so loud that they seem to shake the whole glacier.

14:36Then, it dawns on him. The noises are from the movement of the ice. He speculates that the entire glacier must be filled with pockets of compressed air, trapped when the ice rapidly freezes, and when the ice thaws or shifts, the air is explosively released, making a sound like a gunshot. He returns to his tent, proud that he figured out the mystery. Despite the noise from the glacier, he knows that he has to get some sleep. He's going to need all of his strength for what's to come.

15:16It's approaching noon on January 17th, 1913, and Douglas Mawson pulls his half-sledge over a dangerous valley full of crevasses. The pain in his feet is murder, but he still digs his crampons into the ice to move the sledge forward, one excruciating step at a time. He squints toward the horizon. It's overcast, and the glare through the clouds makes it hard to distinguish where the ice ends and the sky begins. If it was the beginning of the expedition, he would take the day to rest, given the poor visibility. But Mawson can't afford to take days off now. He's already two days late to Cape Denison, and still 65 miles away.

16:02All the parties are supposed to be back by now. The aurora will only wait for so long. Mausson reaches an expanse of smooth snow, and the sledge glides through it easily. But then, on an uphill slope, he takes a step and falls right through the surface. It's a crevasse that's been camouflaged by snowpack. Fortunately, it's not deep and just a few feet down. His boots hit solid ice. With a mighty heave, he scrambles up and out, then stands and brushes snow off his legs. In the dull light, he tries to discern the edges of the crevasse so he can walk around it. He backtracks 50 yards from where he fell in, just to make sure he's safe.

16:46Mawson knows that lately he hasn't been as vigilant as he should be. The lack of food, sleep, and warmth, and the never-ending pain in his feet are sapping his ability to think clearly. And he's anxious to keep moving as quickly as he can. With each passing day, he grows weaker, and his chances of catching the aurora grow more remote. He takes another step, and his boot plunges into the snow and keeps dropping. He has no time to react. Mawson is falling into a crevasse, and this time, he has no idea how deep it goes.

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19:39The End

19:46never to be found again. But then the rope went taut, and he realized the sledge must have caught on something. For now, anyway, he's alive. Mawson looks around him. The crevasse walls are six feet away on either side, too far to reach them and possibly climb out, and it's so deep that he can't see the bottom. Below him, there's only darkness. As he sways on the rope, his mind, as usual, turns to food. He's been so careful about preserving his supply, and now he won't even be able to eat the little that remains. Mawson forces himself to return to the problem at hand. He looks up. The only way out is to climb the rope.

20:30He has no doubt that he could do it if he was rested and well fed. But here, in heavy, wet clothes, after weeks of malnutrition, it seems like an impossible task. He does have one thing going for him though. Days ago, anticipating this very scenario, he tied knots along the rope to make it easier to climb. He takes a breath and reaches above his head, finding a grip on the rope just above the first knot. He starts to pull himself up. His shoulders and biceps scream at him to stop, but he keeps going, one knot at a time. And just as his last ounce of strength has been drained, he finds himself at the top of the crevasse.

21:14He's done it. Feeling both exhausted and triumphant, he puts an arm over the lip and starts to lift himself out.

21:26But then the lip collapses under his weight. With nothing to grab onto, Mawson falls back until the rope catches him again and leaves him dangling over the abyss. Mawson is right back where he started, except now he's used up all his strength. He lets the rope slowly twist him around as a feeling of acceptance washes over him. He can't climb the rope. He can't make it out. His journey ends right here. He wishes that he had a poison pill to hasten his death, rather than being forced to hang here for however long it takes to freeze or to starve. His end will be slow and it will be painful. Unless, of course, he releases himself from the harness by cutting the rope with his pocket knife.

22:16Then he could go like Ninnis. Death by abyss. But then Mawson thinks of his fiancée Paquita back home. How she'll always wonder what happened to him. He mumbles a passage from his favorite poet, Robert Service.

22:36Just have one more try. It's dead easy to die. It's the keeping on living that's hard. Mawson lifts his arms again. They feel like they each weigh a hundred pounds. He finds a knot and pulls. He finds another knot, then two, then three. Every inch feels like a mile. With each knot, he doesn't think he can go any further. But then he does. He's climbing for his life. He has no idea how long it takes. But eventually, he reaches the edge of the crevasse. With a mighty heave, he hoists his depleted body onto the snowy surface. He closes his eyes and lies still. He made it.

23:34Mawson pulls a length of alpine rope tight. He checks his knot. It's strong. It's the morning of January 19th, and Mawson is camped about 55 miles from Cape Denison. After his escape from the crevasse two days ago, he passed out for two hours. He barely mustered the energy to put up his tent that night. With so many miles left to go, and the Aurora likely getting ready to leave without him, he wondered briefly if he should just try to make his last days as comfortable as possible, eat the remaining food and sleep in his tent, instead of torturing himself by continuing his trek. But last night, as he was looking at his swollen, frostbitten fingers, he had a revelation.

24:21He laid one set of fingers perpendicular to the other, and it dawned on him, he needs to make a ladder. So this morning, he set to work. He ties another knot into the rope on his lap. He's fashioning a rope ladder from Mertz's old towing line and some pieces of wood stripped from the sledge. When he's finished, he ties the ladder to the harness and slings one end of it over his shoulder. Now, if he falls into a crevasse, it'll be much easier to climb out. Even as weak as he is, he can still climb a rope ladder. To make sledging easier, he casts aside more gear, including some extra rope and his crampons, which he's been barely using, and which hurt his damaged feet.

25:08Hours later, Mausson falls into another crevasse, but this time he uses the ladder to climb back out. On the surface, he sits in the snow, glad he didn't give up before he devised this solution. He sledges three and a half more miles before he can go no further. He looks ahead and realizes he's finally off Mertz Glacier. The worst crevasses are now behind him, but there's still at least 50 miles to go. That's 10 days of sledging, and his food is almost gone.