rch James
Pigg fell into a crevasse, quite a small one, and his girth, through so
much high feeding, jammed him by his stomach and prevented him falling
far down. The whole situation was ridiculous. We parbuckled him out by
means of the Alpine rope, which was quickly detached from the sledge,
James Pigg taking a lively interest in the proceedings, and finally
rolling over on his back and kicking himself to his feet as we four
dragged him up to the surface. This done, Keohane looking very Irish and
smiling, bent over and peered down into the bluey depths of the crevasse
and, to our intense amusement, James Pigg strolled over alongside of him
and hung his head down too. He then turned to Keohane, who patted his
nose and said, "That was a near shave for you, James Pigg!"

We got to Safety Camp on the evening of March 1 and found two notes from
Captain Scott directing us to make for Hut Point via Castle Rock, and
notifying us that the sea ice was all on the move. We had an interesting
climb next day, but a very difficult one, for we were on the go from 9
a.m. until after 11 that night. First we found our way over the Barrier
Ice to the foot of the slope leading up to the ice ridge northward of
Castle Rock. Here we tethered James Pigg and spent some hours getting our
gear and sledges up the slope. We had no crampons for this work as they
were all on Scott's own sledge, so that it was necessary at times to pull
up the slopes on hands and knees, assisted by our ski sticks, an unusual
procedure but the only one possible to employ on the steeper blue ice. We
took the sledges up one by one and then went down with an Alpine rope to
help James Pigg. We found the pony very bored at our long absence; he
neighed and whinnied when we came down to him, and, to our great
surprise, went up the long, steep slope with far greater ease than we did
ourselves.

It was out of the question for us to proceed the four and a half miles
along the ridges which led down to Hut Point, for darkness had set in and
we had no wish to repeat the performance of an earlier expedition when a
man lost his life hereabouts through slipping right over one of these
steep slopes into the sea on the western side of the promontory ridge
which terminates at Hut Point.

It was snowing when we turned in and still snowing on March 3 when we
turned out of our sleeping-bags. James Pigg, quite snug, clothed in his
own, Blossom's, and Bluecher's rugs, had a little horseshoe