Indeed it had been a dismal march into a blank white wall, and the ponies were sinking badly in the snow, leaving holes a full foot deep. The temperature was +17° and the flakes of snow melted when they lay on the dark colours of the tents and our furs. After building the pony walls water was running down our windproofs.
I note "we are doing well on pony meat and go to bed very content." Notwithstanding the fact that we could not do more than heat the meat by throwing it into the pemmican we found it sweet and good, though tough. The man-hauling party consisted of Lieut. Evans and Lashly who had lost their motors, and Atkinson and Wright who had lost their ponies. They were really quite hungry by now, and most of us pretty well looked forward to our meals and kept a biscuit to eat in our bags if we could. The pony meat therefore came as a relief. I think we ought to have depôted more of it on the cairns. As it was, what we did not eat was given to the dogs. With some tins of extra oil and a depôted pony the Polar Party would probably have got home in safety.
On December 3 we roused out at 2.30 a.m. It was thick and snowy. As we breakfasted the blizzard started from the south-east, and was soon blowing force 9, a full gale, with heavy drift. "The strongest wind I have known here in summer."[210] It was impossible to start, but we turned out and made up the pony walls in heavy drift, one of them being blown down three times. By 1.30 p.m. the sun was shining, and the land was clear. We started at 2, with what we thought was Mount Hope showing up ahead, but soon great snow-clouds were banking up and in two hours we were walking in a deep gloom which made it difficult to find the track made by the man-hauling party ahead. By the time we reached the cairn, which was always built at the end of the first four miles, it was blowing hard from the N.N.W. of all the unlikely quarters of the compass. Bowers and Scott were on ski.
"I put on my windproof blouse and nosed out the track for two miles, when we suddenly came upon the tent of the leading party. They had camped owing to the difficulty of steering a course in such thick weather. The ponies, however, with the wind abaft the beam were going along splendidly, and Scott thought it worth while to shove on. We therefore carried on another four miles, making ten in all, a good half march, before we camped. On ski it was simply ripping, except for the inability to see anything at all. With the wind behind, and the good sliding surface made by the wind-hardened snow, one fairly slithered along. Camping was less pleasant as it was blowing a gale by that time. We are all in our bags again now, with a good hot meal inside one, and blow high or blow low one might be in a worse place than a reindeer bag."[211]
It was all right for the people on ski (and this in itself gave us a certain sense of grievance), but things had not been so easy with the ponies, who were sinking very deeply in places, while we ourselves were sinking well over our ankles. This day we began to cross the great undulations in the Barrier, with the crests some mile apart, which here mark the approach to the land. We had built the walls to the north of the ponies on camping, because the wind was from that direction, but by breakfast on December 4 it was blowing a thick blizzard from the south-east. We began to feel bewildered by these extraordinary weather changes, and not a little exasperated too. Again we could not march, and again we had to dig out the sledges and ponies, and to move them all round to the other side of the walls which we had partly to rebuild. "Oh for the simple man-hauling life!" was our thought, and "poor helpless beasts—this is no country for live stock." By this time we could not see the neighbouring tents for the drift. The situation was not improved by the fact that our tent doors, the tents having been pitched for the strong north wind then blowing, were now facing the blizzard, and sheets of snow entered with each individual. The man-hauling party came up just before the worst of the blizzard started. The dogs alone were comfortable, buried deep beneath the drifted snow. The sailors began to debate who was the Jonah. They said he was the cameras. The great blizzard was brewing all about us.
But at mid-day as though a curtain was rolled back, the thick snow fog cleared off, while at the same time the wind fell calm, and a great mountain appeared almost on the top of us. Far away to the south-east we could distinguish, by looking very carefully, a break in the level Barrier horizon—a new mountain which we reckoned must be at least in latitude 86° and very high. Towards it the ranges stretched away, peak upon peak, range upon range, as far as the eye could see. "The mountains surpassed anything I have ever seen: beside the least of these giants Ben Nevis would be a mere mound, and yet they are so immense as to dwarf each other. They are intersected at every turn with mighty glaciers and ice-falls and eternally ice-filled valleys that defy description. So clear was everything that every rock seemed to stand out, and the effect of the sun as he came round (between us and the mountains) was to make the scene still more beautiful."[212]
Altogether we marched eleven miles this day, and camped right in front of the Gateway, which we reckoned to be some thirteen miles away. We saw no crevasses but crossed ten or twelve very large undulations, and estimated that the dips between them were twelve to fifteen feet. Mount Hope was bigger than we expected, and beyond it, stretching out into the Barrier as far as we could see, was a great white line of jagged edges, the chaos of pressure which this vast glacier makes as it flows into the comparatively stationary ice of the Barrier.
My own pony Michael was shot after we came into camp. He was as attractive a little beast as we had. His light weight helped him on soft surfaces, but his small hoofs let him in farther than most and I notice in Scott's diary that on November 19 the ponies were sinking half-way to the hock, and Michael once or twice almost to the hock itself. A highly strung, spirited animal, his off days took the form of fidgets, during which he would be constantly trying to stop and eat snow, and then rush forward to catch up the other ponies. Life was a constant source of wonder to him, and no movement in the camp escaped his notice. Before we had been long on the Barrier he developed mischievous habits and became a rope eater and gnawer of other ponies' fringes, as we called the coloured tassels we hung over their eyes to ward off snow-blindness. However, he was by no means the only culprit, and he lost his own fringe to Nobby quite early in the proceedings. It was not that he was hungry, for he never quite finished his own feed. At any rate he enjoyed the few weeks before he died, pricking up his ears and getting quite excited when anything happened, and the arrival of the dog-teams each morning after he had been tethered sent him to bed with much to dream of. And I must say his master dreamed pretty regularly too. Michael was killed right in front of the Gateway on December 4, just before the big blizzard, which, though we did not know it, was on the point of breaking upon us, and he was untying his cloth and chewing up everything he could reach to the last. "It was decided after we camped, and he had his feed already on: Meares reported that he had no more food for the dogs. He walked away, and rolled in the snow on the way down, not having done so when we got in. He was just like a naughty child all the way, and pulled all out. He has been a good friend, and has a good record, 82° 23´ S. He was a bit done to-day: the blizzard had knocked him. Gallant little Michael!"[213]
As we got into our bags the mountain tops were fuzzy with drift. We wanted one clear day to get across the chasm: one short march and the ponies' task was done. Their food was nearly finished. Scott wrote that night: "We are practically through with the first stage of our journey."[214]
"Tuesday, December 5. Camp 30. Noon. We awoke this morning to a raging howling blizzard. The blows we have had hitherto have lacked the very fine powdering snow, that especial feature of the blizzard. To-day we have it fully developed. After a minute or two in the open one is covered from head to foot. The temperature is high, so that what falls or drives against one sticks. The ponies—heads, tails, legs and all parts not protected by their rugs—are covered with ice; the animals are standing deep in snow, the sledges are almost covered, and huge drifts above the tents. We have had breakfast, rebuilt the walls, and are now again in our bags. One cannot see the next tent, let alone the land. What on earth does such weather mean at this time of year? It is more than our share of ill-fortune, I think, but the luck may turn yet....