4 o 4 WITH SCOTT: THE SILVER LINING 



twenty miles away. Gran spent all one afternoon making 

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

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

 commandeered 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, I should now consider, 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 his 

 doom. He 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 move- 

 ment no more of the ice moved north, as far as we could 

 judge. 



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

 Captain Scott's instructions read, " 1 am of the opinion that 

 the retreat should not be commenced until the bays have re- 

 frozen, 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 

 if we were not relieved in January, and 1 began to prepare for 

 this event. 



Cracks seemed to be spreading in the sea-ice even while 

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

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

 shock-groan, like 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 the 3rd of February 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 see them just below us. The 

 surface was fair, usually two inches deep in snow and occa- 

 sionally a foot deep. This did not promise easy sledging ; 



