ossible. Birdie is now full of
schemes for doing the trip again next year. Bill says it is too great a
risk in the darkness, and he will not consider it, though he thinks that
to go in August might be possible."[169]

And again a day or two later:

"I came in covered with a red rash which is rather ticklish. My ankles
and knees are a bit puffy, but my feet are not so painful as Bill's and
Birdie's. Hands itch a bit. We must be very weak and worn out, though I
think Birdie is the strongest of us. He seems to be picking up very
quickly. Bill is still very worn and rather haggard. The kindness of
everybody would spoil an angel."[170]

I have put these personal experiences down from my diary because they are
the only contemporary record I possess. Scott's own diary at this time
contains the statement: "The Crozier party returned last night after
enduring for five weeks the hardest conditions on record. They looked
more weather-worn than any one I have yet seen. Their faces were scarred
and wrinkled, their eyes dull, their hands whitened and creased with the
constant exposure to damp and cold, yet the scars of frost-bite were
very few ... to-day after a night's rest our travellers are very
different in appearance and mental capacity."[171]

"Atch has been lost in a blizzard," was the news which we got as soon as
we could grasp anything. Since then he has spent a year of war in the
North Sea, seen the Dardanelles campaign, and much fighting in France,
and has been blown up in a monitor. I doubt whether he does not reckon
that night the worst of the lot. He ought to have been blown into
hundreds of little bits, but always like some hardy indiarubber ball he
turns up again, a little dented, but with the same tough elasticity which
refuses to be hurt. And with the same quiet voice he volunteers for the
next, and tells you how splendid everybody was except himself.

It was the blizzard of July 4, when we were lying in the windless bight
on our way to Cape Crozier, and we knew it must be blowing all round us.
At any rate it was blowing at Cape Evans, though it eased up in the
afternoon, and Atkinson and Taylor went up the Ramp to read the
thermometers there. They returned without great difficulty, and some
discussion seems to have arisen as to whether it was possible to read the
two screens on the sea-ice. Atkinson said he would go and read that in
North Bay: Gran said he was going to South Bay. They started
independently at