s" we used red and black bunting flags, and they showed up very
well. We gave them all sorts of weird names, such as Sardine, Shark, and
so forth, and we knew almost to a yard their distances from one another,
as also their bearings, which helped us when we were overtaken by bad
weather. Eventually it became too dark for any survey work, but there was
always plenty to do indoors for the majority of us. Apart from our
specialist duties some one was always to be found who could give
employment to the willing--there were no idlers or unwilling folk amongst
us. Simpson, for example, would employ as many volunteers as he could get
to follow the balloons which he frequently sent up to record temperature
and pressure. To each of these balloons a fine silk thread was attached,
or rather the thread was attached to the little instrument it carried.
When any strain was put on the thread it broke the thread connecting the
small temperature and pressure instrument to the balloon, the former
dropped on to the ice and was recovered by one of the volunteers, who
followed the silk thread up until he came to the instrument where it had
fallen. One required good eyesight for this work as for everything else
down here, and I have never ceased to marvel at the way Cherry-Garrard
got about and worked so well when one considers that he was very
short-sighted indeed.

Everybody exercised generously, whether by himself on ski, leading a
pony, digging ice for the cook or ice to melt for the ponies' drinking
water, or even with a whole crowd playing rather dangerous football on
the sea ice north of Cape Evans.

When the real winter came I used to walk, after winding the chronometers,
until breakfast time to begin with. This gave me half an hour, then again
before lunch I would put on ski and go for a run with anybody who had not
a pony to exercise. The visibility was frequently limited, particularly
on overcast days; one would glide along over the sea ice, which was in
places wind-swept and in others covered with snow. Nothing in sight but
the gray-white shadow underfoot and the blue-black sky above, a streak or
band just a mere smudge of daylight in the north, but this would be
sufficient to give one direction to go out on. Then slowly, dim,
spectre-like shapes would appear which would gradually sort themselves
out into two lots, black and white--these were Titus's ponies--the white
shapes, the black were the men leading them. On they came, seem