338 WITH SCOTT: THE SILVER LINING 



the first to spot the depot flag. Nelson offered his raisins as 

 a reward, and then won them himself! We reached our 

 dep6t at 2 p.m. 



The sledge was not buried, though a great lee had been 

 built by the blizzards. We had a merry lunch, all six sitting 

 in one tent. Anton's plans caused much amusement. We 

 gathered that he was going back to Russia to marry a rich 

 wife, and so long as she were wealthy we understood that he 

 had no objection even to a wooden leg ! 



The clouds began to roll away en masse, leaving behind a 

 magnificent Italian blue sky, as if the blizzard had purged it 

 of all impurity. The resulting contrast with the dazzling 

 white mountains had something of a Japanese effect, and the 

 afternoon was one of the finest I saw in the Antarctic. 



We camped within seven miles of Butter Point. I was 

 delighted to catch Debenham surreptitiously helping with the 

 back sledge, for he found that his leg was certainly no worse 

 for the rough work he was giving it. 



On the 17th we moved on with another sledge added. 

 They pulled stiffly, and we met with soft snow every few 

 yards. Moreover, we encountered some "screw pack," which 

 is a very formidable obstacle, and of which we met more than 

 enough in the next week or so. I suppose that here the sea- 

 ice had been broken up and jammed together before finally 

 freezing into a continuous sheet. However, by zig-zagging 

 we made steady progress, and reached Butter Point about 



5 P- m - 



We pitched the two tents first thing, on the thick snow- 

 drifts near the tide crack. Then we walked up to the depdt, 

 where our boxes stood out boldly, some three hundred yards 

 away. 



We dragged up the small sledge and loaded it with cocoa, 

 sugar, pemmican, etc., and then a second time took down 

 330 lbs. of biscuits. The floor on which the stores had been 

 laid in January was now over two feet down. This gives 

 some indication of the change in the surface of the piedmont 

 ice in nine months. Probably drift accounted for most of the 

 deposit. 



The two tents now resembled grocers' shops. In one 

 Nelson and Forde were bagging the cocoa, in the other Gran 

 and I opened tins of pemmican and placed them in weekly 



