470 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



for when the team of which he was a member was halted he 

 constantly whined and tugged at his harness in his eager- 

 ness to go on : this did not allow the rest of the team to 

 rest, and they were justifiably resentful. Sometimes a team 

 got a down upon a dog without our being able to discover 

 their doggy reason. In any case we had to watch carefully 

 to prevent them carrying out their intentions, their method 

 of punishment always being the same and ending, if un- 

 checked, in what they probably called justice, and we called 

 murder. 



I have referred to the crusts on the Barrier, where the 

 snow lies in layers with an air-space, perhaps a quarter of an 

 inch, or more, between them. These will subside as you 

 pass over them, giving the inexperienced polar traveller 

 some nasty moments until he learns that they are not 

 crevasses. But the dogs thought they were rabbits, and 

 pounced, time after time. There was a little dog called 

 Mukaka, who got dragged under the sledge in one of the 

 mad penguin rushes the dog-teams made when we were 

 landing stores from the Terra Nova: his back was hurt 

 and afterwards he died. "He is paired with a fat, lazy 

 and very greedy black dog, Noogis by name, and in every 

 march this sprightly little Mukaka will once or twice 

 notice that Noogis is not pulling and will jump over the 

 trace, bite Noogis like a snap, and be back again in his own 

 place before the fat dog knows what has happened." 1 



Then there was Stareek (which is the Russian for old 

 man, starouka being old woman). " He is quite a ridicul- 

 ous 'old man,' and quite the nicest, quietest, cleverest old 

 dog I have ever come across. He looks in face as though he 

 knew all the wickedness of all the world and all its cares, 

 and as if he were bored to death by them." 2 He was the 

 leader of Wilson's team on the Depot Journey, but decided 

 that he was not going out again. Thereafter when he 

 thought there was no one looking he walked naturally ; 

 but if he saw you looking at him he immediately had a 

 frost-bitten paw, limped painfully over thesnow, and looked 

 so pitiful that only brutes like us could think of putting 



1 Wilson's Journal, Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. p. 616. 2 Ibid. 



