218 ‘WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORED 
dinner without waiting longer. Soon she arrived covered 
with blushes and confusion. “I’m so sorry,’ she said, 
“but that horse was the limit, he. . .”’ “‘ Perhaps it was a 
jibber,” suggested her hostess to help her out. ‘No, he 
was a . [ heard the cabby tell him so several times.” 
Titus Oates was the most cheerful and lovable old 
pessimist that you could imagine. Often, after tethering 
and feeding our ponies at a night camp on the Barrier, we 
would watch the dog-teams coming up into camp. “I'll 
give these dogs ten days more,” he would murmur ina voice 
such as some people used when they heard of a British 
victory. 1 am acquainted with so few dragoons that I do 
not know their general characteristics. Few of them, I 
imagine, would have gone about with the slouch which 
characterized his method of locomotion, nor would many 
of them have dined in a hat so shabby that it was picked 
off the peg and passed round as a curiosity. 
He came to look after the horses, and as an officer in 
the Inniskillings he, no doubt, had excellent training. But 
his skill went far deeper than that. There was little he 
didn’t know about horses, and the pity is that he did not 
choose our ponies for us in Siberia: we should have had 
a very different lot. In addition to his general charge of 
them all, Oates took as his own pony the aforesaid devil 
Christopher for the Southern Journey and for previous 
training. We shall hear much more of Christopher, who 
appeared to have come down to the Antarctic to initiate the 
well-behaved inhabitants into all the vices of civilization, 
but from beginning to end Oates’ management of this 
animal might have proved a model to any governor of a 
lunatic asylum. His tact, patience and courage, for Chris- 
topher was a very dangerous beast, remain some of the most 
vivid recollections of a very gallant gentleman. 
In this connection let me add that no animals could 
have had more considerate and often self-sacrificing treat- 
ment than these ponies of ours. Granted that they must be 
used at all (and I do not mean to enter into that question) 
they were fed, trained, and even clothed as friends and 
companions rather than as beasts of burden. They were 
