APPENDIX 
617 
Then Means' dogs, which were all wandering about loose, started 
fighting our team, and we all had to leave Scott and go and separate 
them, which took some time. They fixed on Noogis (I.) badly. We 
then hauled Scott up : it was all three of us could do — fingers a good 
deal frost-bitten at the end. That was all the dogs. Scott has just 
said that at one time he never hoped to get back the thirteen or even 
half of them. When he was down in the crevasse he wanted to go 
off exploring, but we dissuaded him. Of course it was a great 
opportunity. lie kept on saying, 1 I wonder why this is running the 
way it is — you expect to find them at right angles.' 
Scott found inside crevasse warmer than above, but had no ther- 
mometer. It is a great wonder the whole sledge did not drop through : 
the inside was like the cliff of Dover. 
Note 14, />. 197. — February 28. Mcares and I led off with a dog 
team each, and leaving the Barrier we managed to negotiate the first 
long pressure ridge of the sea ice where the seals all lie, without much 
trouble — the dogs were running well and fast and we kept on the old 
tracks, still visible, by which we had come out in January, heading a 
long way out to make a wide detour round the open water off Cape 
Armitage, from which a very wide extent of thick black fog, 1 frost 
smoke 1 as we call it, was rising on our right. This completely obscured 
our view of the open water, and the only suggestion it gave mc was 
that the thaw pool off the Cape was much bigger than when we passed 
it in January and that we should probably have to make a dltour 
of three or four miles round it to reach Hut Point instead of one or 
two. I still thought it was not impossible to reach Hut Point this 
way, so we went on, but before we had run two miles on the sea ice wc 
noticed that wc were coming on to an area broken up by fine thread- 
like cracks evidently quite fresh, and as I ran along by the sledge 1 
paced them and found they curved regularly at every 30 paces, which 
could only mean that they were caused by a swell. This suggested 
to mc that the thaw pool off Cape Armitage was even bigger than I 
thought and that wc were getting on to ice which was breaking up, 
to flow north into it. Wc stopped to consider, and found that the 
cracks in the ice wc were on were the rise and fall of a swell. Knowing 
that the ice might remain like this with each piece tight against the 
next only until the tide turned, I knew that wc must get off it at once 
in case the tide did turn in the next half-hour, when each crack would 
open up into a wide lead of open water and wc should find ourselves 
on an isolated floe. So wc at once turned and went back as fast as 
possible to the unbroken sea ice. Obviously it was now unsafe to go 
round to Hut Point by Cape Armitage and we therefore made for the 
Gap. It was between eight and nine in the evening when we turned, 
and we soon came in sight of the pony party, led as wc thought by 
Captain Scott. Wc were within \ a mile of them when wc hurried right 
across their bows and headed straight for the Gap, making a course 
more than a right angle off the course wc had been on. There was 
