THE WINTER JOURNEY 233 
blew away the ball of his gun. “I blew it into the cerulean 
—how doth Homer have it?—cerulean azure—hence 
Erebus.”’ As we turned in he said, “Cherry, are you 
responsible for your actions ?”’ and when I said Yes, he 
blew loudly on his whistle, and the last thing I remem- 
bered was that he woke up Meares to ask him whether he 
was fancy free. 
It was a magnificent bust. 
Five days later and three men, one of whom at any rate 
is feeling a little frightened, stand panting and sweating 
out in McMurdo Sound. They have two sledges, one tied 
behind the other, and these sledges are piled high with 
sleeping-bags and camping equipment, six weeks’ pro- 
visions, and a venesta case full of scientific gear for pick- 
ling and preserving. In addition there is a pickaxe, ice- 
axes, an Alpine rope, a large piece of green Willesden 
canvas and a bit of board. Scott’s amazed remark when he 
saw our sledges two hours ago, “Bill, why are you taking 
all this oil?’’ pointing to the six cans lashed to the tray on 
the second sledge, had a bite in it. Our weights for such 
travelling are enormous—2 §3 lbs. a man. 
It is mid-day but it is pitchy dark, and it is not warm. 
As we rested my mind went back to a dusty, dingy 
office in Victoria Street some fifteen months ago. “I want 
you to come,”’ said Wilson to me, and then, “I want to go 
to Cape Crozier in the winter and work out the embryo- 
logy of the Emperor penguins, but I’m not saying much 
about it—it might never come off.” Well! this was 
better than Victoria Street, where the doctors had nearly 
refused to let me go because I could only see the people 
across the road as vague blobs walking. ‘Then Bill went 
and had a talk with Scott about it, and they said I might 
come if I was prepared to take the additional risk. At 
that time I would have taken anything. 
After the Depdt Journey, at Hut Point, walking over 
that beastly, slippery, sloping ice-foot which I always 
imagined would leave me some day in the sea, Bill asked 
me whether I would go with him—and who else for a 
