rtheless we had a dim, sickly
sun visible which helped the steering. As the pony food was running short
the pony "Victor" was shot on camping.

I visited Meares and Dimitri in the dog-tent, and they gave me some
"overs" in the shape of cocoa and biscuit, for which I was truly
grateful, as I had been hungry for a month.

A blizzard started on December 4, which delayed us for some hours. Our
party found it had a surplus of 27 whole biscuits--no one could account
for this; we told Bowers, however, and he did not seem surprised, so I
think he shoved in a few biscuits here and there. He told me that some
tins carried 2 lb. more than was marked on them. We covered about 13
miles despite the bad weather beginning the day.

On December 4 we arrived within 12 miles of Shackleton's gap or Southern
Gateway: we could see the outflow of the Beardmore Glacier stretching
away to our left like a series of huge tumbling waves. As we advanced
southwards hopes ran high, for we still had the dogs and five ponies to
help us. Scott expected to camp on the Beardmore itself after the next
march, but bad luck, alas, was against us. The land visible extended from
S.S.W. through S. to N.W. More wonderful peaks or wedge-shaped spines of
snow-capped rock. The first and least exciting stage of our journey was
practically complete. A fifth pony was sacrificed to the hungry
dogs--"Michael," of whom Cherry Garrard had only good words to say--but
then the altruistic Cherry only spoke good words. We did over 17 miles on
December 4, heading for the little tributary glacier which Shackleton
named the Gap; it bore S. 9 degrees E. fifteen miles distant when we put
up our tent.

Whilst marching well ahead of the pony party we unconsciously dropped
into a hollow of an undulation, and foolishly did not spot it when we
paused to build a cairn. Continuing our march we looked back to find no
cairn. This first indicated to us the existence of undulations in the
neighbourhood, and we frequently lost the ponies to view.

We appreciated that we were outdistancing them, however, and camped at 8
p.m.

It being my cooking week, and, as we fondly imagined, our penultimate day
on the Great Ice Barrier, combined with a very good march and a very
bright outlook, we had an extra fine hoosh; it contained the full
allowance of pemmican, a pannikin full of pony flesh cut in little
slices, about 1 1/2 pints of crushed biscuit from our surplus, and some
four ounces of cornf