ld have augured a gloomy future for us.

Reluctant as I was to confess it to myself, I soon realised that the
ceding of one man from my party had been too great a sacrifice, but there
was no denying it, and I was eventually compelled to explain the
situation to Lashly and Crean and lay bare the naked truth. No man was
ever better served than I was by these two; they cheerfully accepted the
inevitable, and throughout our home-ward march the three of us literally
stole minutes and seconds from each day in order to add to our marches,
but it was a fight for life: The rarified air made our breathing more
difficult, and we suffered from shortness of breath whenever the
inequalities of the surface became severe, and sudden jerks conveyed
themselves to our tired bodies through the medium of the rope traces.

Day after day we fought our way northward over the high Polar tableland.
The silence now that we had no other party with us was ghastly, for
beyond the sound of our own voices and the groaning of the sledge runners
when the surface was bad there was no sound whatever to remind us of the
outer world. As mile after mile was covered our thoughts wandered from
the Expedition to those in our homeland, and thought succeeded thought
while the march progressed until the satisfying effect of the last meal
had vanished and life became one vast yearning for food.

Three days after leaving Captain Scott we encountered a blizzard and were
forced to continue our marches although faced with navigational
difficulties which made it impossible for us to maintain more than a very
rough northward direction. Muffled up tightly in our wind-proof clothing,
-we did all in our power to prevent the dust-fine snow-flakes which
whirled around from penetrating into the tiniest opening in our clothes.
The blizzard blinded and baffled us, forcing us always to turn our faces
from it. The stinging wind cut and slashed our cheeks like the constant
jab of a thousand frozen needle points.

This first blizzard which fell upon us lasted for three whole days, and
at the end of that time we found ourselves considerably wide of our
course.

On the 7th January, in spite of a temperature of 22 degrees below zero, a
fresh southerly wind and driving snow, Lashly, Crean, and myself laid 19
miles behind us.

On the 8th we again covered this distance, although the weather was so
bad that we entirely lost the track, and on the following day, when the
blizzard was a