6zo 
SCOTT'S LAST KXPFDITIOX 
had considerable difficulty and ran a pretty good risk in doing this, 
but succeeded all right. There were now Scott, Oatcs, Crean. Gran, 
Mcares, and myself here and only three sleeping-bags, so the three 
first remained to sec if they could help Bowers, Cherry-Garrard, and 
the ponies, while Mcares, Gran, and I returned to look after our dogs 
at Hut Point. Here we had only two sleeping-bags for the three of 
us, so we had to take turns, and I remained up till i o'clock that night 
while Gran had six hours in my bag. It was a bitterly cold job after 
a long day. We had been up at 5 with nothing to eat till 1 o'clock, 
and walked 14 miles. The nights arc now almost dark. 
March 2. A very bitter wind blowing and it was a cheerless job 
waiting for six hours to get a sleep in the bag. I walked down from 
our tent to the hut and watched whales blowing in the semi-darkness 
out in the black water of the Strait. When we turned out in the 
morning the pony party was still on floating ice but not any further 
from the Barrier ice. By a merciful providence the current was taking 
them rather along the Barrier edge, where they went adrift, instead 
of straight out to sea. We could do nothing more for them, so we 
set to our work with the dogs. It was blowing a bitter gale of wind 
from the S.E. with some drift and we made a number of journeys back- 
wards and forwards between the Gap and the hut, carrying our tent 
and camp equipment down and preparing a permanent picketing line 
for the dogs. As the ice had all gone out of the Strait we were quite 
cut of! from any return to Cape Evans until the sea should again freeze 
over, and this was not likely until the end of April. We rigged up a 
small fireplace in the hut and found some wood and made a fire for 
an hour or so at each meal, but as there was no coal and not much 
wood we felt we must be economical with the fuel, and so also with 
matches and everything else, in case Bowers should lose his sledge 
loads, which had most of the supplies for the whole party to last twelve 
men for two months. The weather had now become too thick for us 
to distinguish anything in the distance and we remained in ignorance 
as to the party adrift until Saturday. I had also lent my glasses 
to Captain Scott. This night I had first go in the bag, and turned 
out to shiver for eight hours till breakfast. There was literally nothing 
in the hut that one could cover oneself with to keep warm and we 
couldn't run to keeping the fire going. It was very cold work. There 
were heaps of biscuit cases here which we had left in Discovery days, 
and with these we built up a small inner hut to live in. 
March 3. Spent the day in transferring dogs in couples from the 
Gap to the hut. In the afternoon Tcddic Evans and Atkinson turned 
up from over the hills, having returned from their Corner Camp journey 
with one horse and two seamen, all of which they had left encamped 
at Castle Rock, three miles off on the hills. They naturally expected 
to find Scott here and everyone else and had heard nothing of the 
pony party going adrift, but having found only open water ahead of 
them they turned back and came to land by Castle Rock slopes. 
