APPENDIX 429 



possibly take a dog sledge this way, so we walked, taking the Alpine Tope 

 to cross the pressure ridges, which are full of crevasses. 



We got to this tent soon after noon and were astonished to find that not 

 Teddie Evans and his two seamen were here, but that Scott and Oates and 

 Gran were in it and no pony with them. Teddie Evans was still on his 

 way back from Corner Camp and had not arrived. It was now for the first 

 time that we understood how the accident had happened. When we had 

 left Safety Camp yesterday with the dogs, the ponies began their march to 

 follow us, but one of the ponies was so weak after the last blizzard and so 

 obviously about to die that Bowers, Cherry-Garrard, and Crean were sent 

 on with the four capable ponies, while Scott, Oates, and Gran remained at 

 Safety Camp till the sick pony died, which happened apparently that night. 

 He was dead and buried when we got there. We found that Scott had that 

 morning seen the open water up to the Barrier edge and had been in a 

 dreadful state of mind, thinking that Meares and I, as well as the whole 

 pony party, had gone out into the Strait on floating ice. He was therefore 

 much relieved when we arrived and he learned for the first time where the 

 pony party was trying to get to fast ice again. We were now given some 

 food, which we badly wanted, and while we were eating we saw in the far 

 distance a single man coming hurriedly along the edge of the Barrier ice 

 from the direction of the catastrophe party and towards our camp. Gran 

 went off on ski to meet him, and when he arrived we found it was Crean, 

 who had been sent off by Bowers with a note, unencumbered otherwise, to 

 jump from one piece of floating ice to another until he reached the fast edge 

 of the Barrier in order to let Capt. Scott know what had happened. This 

 he did, of course not knowing that we or anyone else had seen him go adrift, 

 and being unable to leave the ponies and all his loaded sledges himself. 

 Crean had considerable difficulty and ran a pretty good risk in doing this, 

 but succeeded all right. There were now Scott, Oates, Crean, Gran, 

 Meares, and myself here and only three sleeping-bags, so the three first 

 remained to see if they could help Bowers, Cherry-Garrard, and the ponies, 

 while Meares, Gran, and I returned to look after our dogs at Hut Point. 

 Here we had only two sleeping-bags for the three of us, so we had to take 

 turns, and I remained up till 1 o'clock that night while Gran had six hours 

 in my bag. It was a bitterly cold job after a long day. We had been up 

 at 5 with nothing to eat till 1 o'clock, and walked 14 miles. The nights are 

 now almost dark. 



March 2. A very bitter wind blowing and it was a cheerless job waiting 

 for six hours to get a sleep in the bag. I walked down from our tent to the 

 hut and watched whales blowing in the semi-darkness out in the black water 

 of the Strait. When we turned out in the morning the pony party was still 

 on floating ice but not any further from the Barrier ice. By a merciful 

 providence the current was taking them rather along the Barrier edge, 

 where they went adrift, instead of straight out to sea. We could do noth- 

 ing more for them, so we set to our work with the dogs. It was blowing a 

 bitter gale of wind from the S.E. with some drift and we made a number 

 of journeys backwards and forwards between the Gap and the hut, carry- 



