1911] CHERRY-GARRARD’S ACCOUNT aS 
cooker and all essential gear, momentarily expecting the weather 
to break on us again. It looked as thick as could be and close at 
hand in the south. 
We discussed the position, and came to the conclusion that as 
our oil had now run down to one can only, and as we couldn’t 
afford to spend time trying tc fix up an improvised blubber stove 
in a roofless hut, we ought to return to Cape Evans. 
It was disappointing to have seen so very little of the Em- 
peror penguins, but it seemed to me unavoidable, and that we had 
attempted too difficult an undertaking without light in the 
winter. 
I had also some doubt as to whether our bags were not 
already in such a state as might make them quite unusable should 
we meet with really low temperatures again in our Journey home. 
I therefore decided to start for Hut Point the next day. To 
this end we sorted out all our gear, and made a depot in a corner 
of the stone hut of all that we could usefully leave there for use 
on a future occasion. This depot I fixed up finally with Cherry 
the next morning while Bowers packed up the sledge at our tent. 
We put rocks on our depot and the nine-foot sledge, and the 
pick, with a matchbox containing a note tied to the handle, where 
it could not be missed. We also fixed up bamboos round the 
walls to attract attention to the spot. 
[Mr. Cherry-Garrard’s account of this episode must be 
quoted in full: 
All that day and night it blew 11, with absolutely no real 
lull; what the wind was in the gusts we shall never know, it was 
something appalling. We quite lost count of time, but Sunday 
morning it was just the same. This was Bill’s birthday. 
About now we began to realise that the roof must go. The 
stones holding the door end (leeward) of the roof began to 
work: drift was coming in, and the place where I had slit up the 
roof to fold it in over the door was obviously weak: the food- 
bags did something to remedy this. Bill told us he thought that 
to turn over, flaps under, would give us our best chance. We 
could do nothing, and lay in our bags until Birdie told us that the 
roof was flapping more: he was out of his bag trying to hold the 
rocks firm, and I and Bill were sitting up in ours pressing against 
them with a bamboo. Suddenly the roof went—first, I believe, 
over the door, splitting into seven or eight strips along the lec- 
