follow it. Because this was our road to the
Barrier, it was suddenly decided that we must start on the Depot journey
the following day or perhaps not at all. Already it was impossible to get
sledges south off the Cape: but there was a way to walk the ponies along
the land until they could be scrambled down a steep rubbly slope on to
sea-ice which still remained. Would it float away before we got there? It
was touch and go. "One breathes a prayer that the Road holds for the few
remaining hours. It goes in one place between a berg in open water and a
large pool of the Glacier face--it may be weak in that part, and at any
moment the narrow isthmus may break away. We are doing it on a very
narrow margin."[116]

FOOTNOTES:

[84] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 77.

[85] Thomson.

[86] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 80.

[87] Wilson's Journal, _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 613,
614.

[88] See Introduction, p. xxxv.

[89] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 87.

[90] The extreme south point of the island, a dozen miles farther,
on one of whose minor headlands, Hut Point, stood the
Discovery hut.

[91] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 88-90.

[92] Ibid. p. 91.

[93] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 52-93.

[94] Ibid. pp. 92-94.

[95] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 111.

[96] Ibid. p. 94.

[97] Ibid. p. 100.

[98] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 230.

[99] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 113-114.

[100] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 94-96.

[101] Ibid. p. 106.

[102] My own diary.

[103] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 111.

[104] My own diary.

[105] _The South Pole_, vol. i. p. 278.

[106] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 128.

[107] Ibid. p. 129.

[108] My own diary.

[109] See Introduction, p. xxxiv.

[110] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 122.

[111] Ibid. pp. 122-123.

[112] Priestley's diary.

[113] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 127.

[114] Ibid. p. 134.

[115] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 136.

[116] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 138.

CHAPTER V

THE DEPOT JOURNEY

The dropping of the daylight in the west.
ROBERT BROWNING.

January to March 1911

SCOTT