THE DEPOT JOURNEY 145 
and I am going to see you safe here up on the Barrier 
before I do anything else.’ Cherry and I had got every- 
thing ready, so, dragging up two sledges, we dumped the 
gear off them, and using them as ladders, one down from 
the berg on to the buffer piece of ice, and the other up to 
the top of the Barrier, we got up without difficulty. Cap- 
tain Scott was so pleased, that I realized the feeling he must 
have had all day. He had been blaming himself for our 
deaths, and here we were very much alive. He said: ‘My 
dear chaps, you can’t think how glad I am to see you safe 
—Cherry likewise.’ 
“I was all for saving the beasts and sledges, however, 
so he let us go back and haul the sledges on to the nearest 
floe. We did this one by one and brought the ponies along, 
while Titus dug down a slope from the Barrier edge in the 
hope of getting the ponies up it. Scott knew more about 
ice than any of us, and realizing the danger we didn’t, still 
wanted to abandon things. I fought for my point tooth 
and nail, and got him to concede one article and then 
another, and still the ice did not move till we had thrown 
and hauled up every article on to the Barrier except the two 
ladders and the ponies. 
“To my intense disappointment at this juncture the ice 
started to move again. Titus had been digging down a 
toad in the Barrier edge, and I hoped to dig down a similar 
slope from the floe, the snow thus shovelled down would 
go over the blue ice chunk, cover up the slippery ice and 
level it up. It would have taken hours, but was the only 
chance of getting the animals up. We dug like fury until 
Captain Scott peremptorily ordered us up. I ran up on the 
floe and took the nosebags off the ponies before we got on 
to the Barrier, and hauled the sledges up. It was only just 
in time. There was the faintest south-easterly air, but, like 
a black snake, the lane of water stretched between the 
ponies and ourselves. It widened almost imperceptibly, 
2 feet, 6 feet, 10 feet, 20 feet, and, sick as we were about the 
ponies, we were glad to be on the safe side of that. 
“We dragged the sledges in a little way, and, leaving 
ih 
