1 90 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [FEBRUARY 



However we had plenty of seal meat, and as we were not work- 

 ing we required much less food. 



So passed several days. Gran spent all one afternoon mak- 

 ing chupatties. The lid of the camera box was his pudding- 

 board. He used the wheat meal ' thickers ' for dough, and col- 

 lared our allowance of raisins. The cakes were cut out with the 

 rim of a cup, and then fried in a mixture of butter, fat, blubber, 

 and soot. Anyhow the result was highly successful, though the 

 inside was somewhat wet and the whole cake I should now con- 

 sider distinctly heavy ! 



Each day we started the last bag of something precious. First 

 the pemmican, then the chocolate, then the butter. Only one 

 seal had been visible for some days, and I decreed her doom. 

 She lay on a large piece of ice which was rising and falling with 

 the swell. We reached this across an ice island, surging about in 

 a large pool. In spite of all this movement, no more of the ice 

 moved north as far as we could judge. 



On the evening of February ist I held a council. Captain 

 Scott's instructions read: 'I am of the opinion that the retreat 

 should not be commenced until the bays have refrozen, probably 

 towards the end of March. An attempt to retreat overland 

 might involve you in difficulties whereas you could build a 

 stone hut provision it with seal meat and remain in safety in 

 any convenient station on the coast.' 



However, he gave me permission to begin the retreat in 

 February if we were not relieved in January, and I began to 

 prepare for this event, for I felt sure we could traverse the pied- 

 mont glacier. 



Cracks seemed to be spreading on the sea ice even while one 

 was watching it. The surging ice-blocks in the tide-crack, now 

 twenty feet wide, rose several feet. Now and again a huge 

 shock, as of a big rock bumping on another, announced a new 

 crack, while a constant roar, like that of a distant lion, announced 

 the periods of maximum of the swell rolling in from twenty miles 

 away. 



On February 3 Debenham, Gran, and I climbed the glacier 

 slope behind our camp to prospect for a path. We roped up and 

 proceeded about three miles southward, keeping well behind the 

 crevasses. These are numerous on the steep seaward slope, but 

 we met with none on the fairly level ground, though we could 



