been blaming himself for our deaths, and here we were very much alive. He
said: 'My dear chaps, you can't think how glad I am to see you
safe--Cherry likewise.'

"I was all for saving the beasts and sledges, however, so he let us go
back and haul the sledges on to the nearest floe. We did this one by one
and brought the ponies along, while Titus dug down a slope from the
Barrier edge in the hope of getting the ponies up it. Scott knew more
about ice than any of us, and realizing the danger we didn't, still
wanted to abandon things. I fought for my point tooth and nail, and got
him to concede one article and then another, and still the ice did not
move till we had thrown and hauled up every article on to the Barrier
except the two ladders and the ponies.

* * * * *

"To my intense disappointment at this juncture the ice started to move
again. Titus had been digging down a road in the Barrier edge, and I
hoped to dig down a similar slope from the floe, the snow thus shovelled
down would go over the blue ice chunk, cover up the slippery ice and
level it up. It would have taken hours, but was the only chance of
getting the animals up. We dug like fury until Captain Scott peremptorily
ordered us up. I ran up on the floe and took the nosebags off the ponies
before we got on to the Barrier, and hauled the sledges up. It was only
just in time. There was the faintest south-easterly air, but, like a
black snake, the lane of water stretched between the ponies and
ourselves. It widened almost imperceptibly, 2 feet, 6 feet, 10 feet, 20
feet, and, sick as we were about the ponies, we were glad to be on the
safe side of that.

"We dragged the sledges in a little way, and, leaving them, pitched the
two tents half a mile farther in, for bits of the Barrier were
continually calving. While supper (it was about 3 A.M.) was being cooked,
Scott and I walked down again. The wind had gone to the east, and all the
ice was under weigh. A lane 70 feet wide extended along the Barrier edge,
and Killers were chasing up and down it like racehorses. Our three
unfortunate beasts were some way out, sailing parallel to the Barrier. We
returned, and if ever one could feel miserable I did then. My feelings
were nothing to what poor Captain Scott had had to endure that day. I at
once broached the hopeful side of the subject, remarking that, with the
two Campbell had left, we had ten ponies at Winter quarters. He said,
how