3 8 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [JULY 



gale continued and freshened to force 9 and lasted all night. 

 Bowers here determined that the tent should not go off alone, 

 and arranged a line by which he fastened the cap of the tent to 

 himself as he lay in his bag. The temp, during the day was from 

 15-3 to 17, and the whole sky was overcast. 



Bowers to-day turned his bag to hair outside. Cherry had 

 a sound sleep in his bag, which he badly wanted. 



[I, writes C.-G., was feeling as if I should crack, and accepted 

 Birdie's eiderdown, which he had not used and had for many 

 days been asking me to use. It was wonderfully self-sacrificing 

 of him, more than I can write. I felt a brute to take it, but I was 

 getting useless, unless I got some sleep, which my big bag would 

 not allow. The day we got down to the Emperors I felt so done 

 that I did not much care whether I went down a crevasse or not. 

 We had gone through a great deal since then. Bill and Birdie 

 kept on assuring me that I was doing more than my share of the 

 work, but I think that I was getting more and more weak. Birdie 

 kept wonderfully strong: he slept most of the night; the diffi- 

 culty was for him to get into his bag without going to sleep. He 

 kept the meteorological log untiringly, but some of these nights 

 he had to give it up for the time because he could not keep awake. 

 He used to fall asleep with his pannikin in his hand and let it fall, 

 and once he had the lighted primus. 



Bill's bag was getting hopeless : it was really too small for an 

 eiderdown and was splitting all over the place great long holes. 

 He never consciously slept for nights he did sleep a bit, for we 

 heard him. Except for this night and the next, when Birdie's 

 eiderdown was fairly dry, I never consciously slept; except that 

 I used to wake for five or six nights running with the same night- 

 mare that we were drifted up and that Bill and Birdie were 

 passing the gear into my bag, cutting it open to do so or some 

 other variation, I did not know that I had been asleep at all.] 



All our bags were by this time so saturated with water that 

 they froze too stiff to bend with safety, so from now onwards to 

 Cape Evans we never rolled them up, but packed them one on the 

 other full length, like coffins, on the sledge. Even so, they were 

 breaking or broken in several places in the efforts we made to 

 get into them in the evenings. We always took the precaution to 

 stow our personal kit bags and sleeping fur boots and socks in 

 such parts as would give us an entry to start getting in by. They 



