366 
SCOTTS LAST EXPEDITION [August 
cover it as best they could with their floorcloth. But 
now fortune befriended them ; a search to the north 
revealed the tent lying amongst boulders a quarter of 
a mile away, and, strange to relate, practically uninjured, 
a fine testimonial for the material used in its construction. 
On the following day they started homeward, and im- 
mediately another blizzard fell on them, holding them 
prisoners for two days. By this time the miserable 
condition of their effects was beyond description. The 
sleeping-bags were far too stiff to be rolled up, in fact they 
were so hard frozen that attempts to bend them actually 
split the skins ; the eiderdown bags inside Wilson's and 
C.-G.'s reindeer covers served but to fitfully stop the gaps 
made by such rents. All socks, finnesko, and mits had 
long been coated with ice ; placed in breast pockets or 
inside vests at night they did not even show signs of 
thawing, much less of drying. It sometimes took C.-G. 
three-quarters of an hour to get into his sleeping-bag, 
so flat did it freeze and so difficult was it to open. It is 
scarcely possible to realise the horrible discomforts of the 
forlorn travellers as they plodded back across the Barrier 
with the temperature again constantly below -6o°. In 
this fashion they reached Hut Point and on the following 
night our home quarters. 
Wilson is disappointed at seeing so little of the penguins, 
but to me and to everyone who has remained here the 
result of this effort is the appeal it makes to our imagina- 
tion as one of the most gallant stories in Polar History. 
That men should wander forth in the depth of a Polar 
night to face the most dismal cold and the fiercest gales 
