CHAPTER Wi 
THE FIRST WINTER 
The highest object that human beings can set before themselves is not 
the pursuit of any such chimera as the annihilation of the unknown; it is 
simply the unwearied endeavour to remove its boundaries a little further 
from our little sphere of action —Huxtey. 
AND so we came back to our comfortable hut. Whatever 
merit there may be in going to the Antarctic, once there 
you must not credit yourself for being there. To spend a 
year in the hut at Cape Evans because you explore is no 
more laudable than to spend a month at Davos because you 
have consumption, or to spend an English winter at the 
Berkeley Hotel. It is just the most comfortable thing and 
the easiest thing to do under the circumstances. 
In our case the best thing was not at all bad, for the hut, 
as Arctic huts go, was as palatial as is the Ritz, as hotels 
go. Whatever the conditions of darkness, cold and wind, — 
might be outside, there was comfort and warmth and good 
cheer within. 
And there was a mass of work to be done, as well as at 
least two journeys of the first magnitude ahead. 
When Scott first sat down at his little table at Winter 
Quarters to start working out a most complicated scheme 
of weights and averages for the Southern Journey, his 
thoughts were gloomy, I know. “ This is the end of the 
Pole,” he said to me, when he pulled us off the bergs after 
the sea-ice had broken up; the loss of six ponies out of the 
eight with which we started the Depdt Journey, the 1nm- 
creasing emaciation and weakness of the pony transport as 
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