."[131]

* * * * *

Meanwhile those of us who had been left at Hut Point with the ponies and
dogs journeyed out one afternoon to Safety Camp to get some more bales of
compressed fodder. Easter Sunday we spent in a howling blizzard, which
cleared in the afternoon sufficiently to see a golden sun sinking into a
sea of purple frost-smoke and drift.

I have it on record that we had tinned haddock this day for breakfast,
made by Oates with great care, a biscuit and cheese hoosh for lunch, and
a pemmican fry this evening, followed by cocoa with a tin of sweetened
Nestle's milk in it, truly a great luxury. For the rest we mended our
finnesko, and read Bleak House. Meares told us how the Chinese who were
going to war with the Lolos (who are one of the Eighteen tribes on the
borders of Thibet and China) tied the Lolo hostage to a bench, and,
having cut his throat, caught the blood which dripped from it. Into this
they dipped their flag, and then cut out the heart and liver, which the
officers ate, while the men ate the rest!

The relief party arrived on April 18: "We had spent such a happy week,
just the seven of us, at the Discovery hut that I think, glad as we were
to see the men, we would most of us have rather been left undisturbed,
and I expected that it would mean that we should have to move homewards,
as it turned out.

"Meares is to be left in charge of the party which remains, namely Forde
and Keohane of the old stagers, and Nelson, Day, Lashly and Dimitri of
the new-comers. He is very amusing with the stores and is evidently
afraid that the food which has just been brought in (sugar, self-raising
flour, chocolate, etc.) will all be eaten up by those who have brought
it. So we have dampers without butter, and a minimum of chocolate.

"Tuesday and Tuesday night was one of our few still, cold days, nearly
minus thirty. The sea northwards from Hut Point, whence the ice had
previously all gone out, froze nearly five inches by Wednesday mid-day,
when we got three more seal. Scott was evidently thinking that on
Thursday, when we were to start, we might go by the sea-ice all the
way--when suddenly with no warning it silently floated out to sea."[132]

[Illustration: A CORNICE OF SNOW]

The following two teams travelled to Cape Evans via the Hutton Cliffs on
April 21: 1st team Scott, Wilson, Atkinson, Crean; 2nd team Bowers,
Oates, Cherry-Garrard, Hooper. It was blowing hard, as usual, at