kept
him going although he showed so much distress. It was surprising what
spirit the little brute had: if we started to march away Blossom
staggered along after us, looking like a spectre against the white
background of snow. We kept on giving him up and making to kill him, but
he actually struggled on for over thirty miles before falling down and
dying in his tracks. We built a snow-cairn over him and planted what pony
food we had no further use for on the top of the cairn.

The third pony, James Pigg, was kept fit and snug under a big snow-wall
whenever we were not marching, and he won home to Safety Camp with very
little trouble, frequently covering distances equal to our own marching
capability. Once Safety Camp had been regained we got good weather again
and James Pigg became quite frisky, ate all that we could give him, and,
to our delight, his eyes regained their brightness and he began to put on
flesh.

We spent a couple of days at Safety Camp before Captain Scott returned
with the dog teams. In order to cut off corners he shaved things rather
fine, and getting rather too close to White Island, the dog teams ran
along the snow-bridge of a crevasse, the bridge subsided, and all the
dogs of Scott's and Meares's sledge, with the exception of Osman, the
leader, and the two rear animals, disappeared into a yawning chasm. Scott
and Meares secured their sledge clear of the snow bridge and with the
assistance of their companions, Wilson and Cherry-Garrard, who had the
other team, they were lowered by means of an Alpine rope into the
crevasse until they could get at the dogs. They, found the poor animals
swinging round, snapping at one another and howling dismally, but in an
awful tangle. The dogs were rescued a pair at a time and, fortunately for
all concerned, they lay down and rested when hauled up to the surface by
Uncle Bill and "Cherry." When all the animals were up and Scott and
Meares themselves had regained safety, a dog fight took place between the
two teams. Apart from this excitement things had gone very well. Scott
was most enthusiastic about the capabilities of Meares's dogs, and he
then expressed an opinion that he would probably run the dogs light on
the Polar journey and do the final plateau march to the Pole itself with
them. What a pity he didn't! Had he done so he might have been alive
to-day.

We learnt from the dog-drivers that the depot had been established in 79
degrees 30 minutes S. 169 degr