The wind all the time turned our breath into cakes of ice on our beards. Taking sights when we stopped was a bitterly cold job: fingers had to be bared to work the little theodolite screws, and in the biting wind one's finger-tips soon went. Over 16 miles were laid behind us on Christmas Eve when we reached Latitude 85 degrees 35 minutes S., Longitude 159 degrees 8 minutes E. I obtained the variation of the compass here—179 degrees 35 minutes E., so that we were between the Magnetic and Geographical Poles.
The temperature down to 10 degrees below zero made observing unpleasant, when one had cooled down and lost vitality at the end of the day's march.
Christmas Day, 1911, found our two tiny green tents pitched on the King Edward VII. Plateau—the only objects that broke the monotony of the great white glittering waste that stretches from the Beardmore Glacier Head to the South Pole. A light wind was blowing from the South, and little whirls of fine snow, as fine as dust, would occasionally sweep round the tents and along the sides of the sledge runners, streaming away almost like smoke to the Northward. Inside the tents breathing heavily were our eight sleeping figures—in these little canvas shelters soon after 4 a.m. the sleepers became restless and occasionally one would wake, glance at one's watch, and doze again. Exactly at 5 a.m. our leader shouted "Evans," and both of us of that name replied, "Right-o, sir."
Immediately all was bustle, we scrambled out of our sleeping-bags, only the cook remaining in each tent. The others with frantic haste filled the aluminium cookers with the gritty snow that here lay hard and windswept. The cookers filled and passed in, we, gathered socks, finnesko, and putties off the clothes lines which we had rigged between the ski which struck upright in the snow to save them from being drifted over in the night. The indefatigable Bowers swung his thermometer in the shade until it refused to register any lower, glanced at the clouds, made a note or two in his miniature meteorological log book, and then blew on his tingling fingers, noted the direction of the wind, and ran to our tent. Inside all had lashed up their bags and converted them into seats, the primus stove burnt with a curious low roar, and peculiar smell of paraffin permeated the tent. By the time we had changed our footgear the savoury smell of the pemmican proclaimed that breakfast was ready. The meal was eaten with the same haste that had already made itself apparent.
A very short smoke sufficed, and Captain Scott gave the signal to strike camp. Out went everything through the little round door, down came both tents, all was packed in a jiffy on the two 12-foot sledges, each team endeavouring to be first, and in an incredibly short space of time both teams swung Southward, keeping step, and with every appearance of perfect health. But a close observer, a man trained to watch over men's health, over athletes training, perhaps, would have seem something amiss.
The two teams, in spite of the Christmas spirit, and the "Happy Christmas" greetings, they exchanged to begin with, soon lost their springy step, the sledges dragged more slowly, and we gazed ahead almost wistfully.
Yes, the strain was beginning to tell, though none of us would have confessed it. Lashly and I had already pulled a sledge of varying weight—but mostly a loaded one—over 600 miles, and all had marched this distance.
During the forenoon something was seen ahead like the tide race over a rocky ledge—it was another ice fall stretching from East to West, and it had to be crossed, there could be no more deviation, for since Atkinson's party turned we had been five points West of our course at times. Alas, more wear for the runners of the sledge, which meant more labour to the eight of us, so keen to succeed in our enterprise—soon we are in the thick of it; first one slips and is thrown violently down, then a sledge runs over the slope of a great ice wave.
The man trying to hold it back is relentlessly thrown, and the bow of the sledge crashes on to the heel of the hindermost of those hauling ahead with a thud that means "pain." But the victim utters no sound, just smiles in answer to the anxious questioning gaze of his comrades.
Something happened in the last half of that Christmas forenoon. Lashly, whose 44th birthday it was, celebrated the occasion by falling into a crevasse 8 feet wide.