530 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



when we camp, and good food is our lot. Pray God we get 

 better travelling as we are not so fit as we were, and the 

 season is advancing apace." And on February 21, We 

 never won a march of 8| miles with greater difficulty, but 

 we can't go on like this." x 



A breeze suddenly came away from S.S.E., force 4 to 6, 

 at 1 1 a.m. on February 22, and they hoisted the sail on the 

 sledge they had just picked up. They immediately lost the 

 tracks they were following, and failed to find the cairns 

 and camp remains which they should have picked up if 

 they had been on the right course, which was difficult here 

 owing to the thick weather we had on the outward march. 

 Bowers was sure they were too near the land and they 

 steered out, but still failed to pick up the line on which 

 their depots and their lives depended. Scott was convinced 

 they were outside, not inside the line. The next morning 

 Bowers took a round of angles, and they came to the con- 

 clusion, on slender evidence, that they were still too near 

 the land. They had an unhappy march still off the tracks, 

 " but just as we decided to lunch, Bowers' wonderful sharp 

 eyes detected an old double lunch cairn, the theodolite tele- 

 scope confirmed it, and our spirits rose accordingly." 2 

 Then Wilson had another " bad attack of snow-glare : 

 could hardly keep a chink of eye open in goggles to see 

 the course. Fat pony hoosh." 3 This day they reached 

 the Lower Barrier Depot. 



They were in evil case, but they would have been all 

 right, these men, if the cold had not comedown upon them, 

 a bolt quite literally from the blue of a clear sky : unex- 

 pected, unforetold and fatal. The cold itself was not so 

 tremendous until you realize that they had been out four 

 months, that they had fought their way up the biggest 

 glacier in the world in feet of soft snow, that they had spent 

 seven weeks under plateau conditions of rarefied air, big 

 winds and low temperatures, and they had watched one of 

 their companions die — not in a bed, in a hospital or ambul- 

 ance, nor suddenly, but slowly, night by night and day 

 by day, with his hands frost-bitten and his brain going, 



1 Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. pp. 575-576. 2 Ibid. p. 577. 3 Wilson. 



