By now we were exhausted, rudely shaken, and our eyes were smarting with the glare and the glint of the sun's reflections from that awful maze of ice falls. I felt my heart would burst from the sustained effort of launching that sledge, which now seemed to weigh a ton. There seemed no way out of this confused mass of pressure ridges and, crevasses. We were "all out," and come what may I had to change our tactics, accordingly I ordered a halt. No room could be found to pitch our tent and I could not see any possibility of saving my party. We could stagger on no farther with the dreadfully heavy sledge. The prospect was hopeless and our food was nearly gone. Some rest must be obtained to give us strength for this absolute battle for life. The great strain of the day's efforts had thoroughly exhausted us, and it took me back to the last day of the December blizzard which caused the eventual loss of the Polar Party and the ruin of Captain Scott's so excellently laid plans. I remembered the poor ponies after their fourteen hours' march, their flanks heaving, their black eyes dull, shrivelled and wasted. The poor beasts had stood, with their legs stuck out in strange attitudes, mere wrecks of the beautiful little animals that we took away from New Zealand, and I could not help likening our condition to theirs on that painful day. The three of us sat on the sledge—hollow-eyed and gaunt looking. We were done, our throats were dry, and we could scarcely speak. There was no wind, the atmosphere was perfectly still, and the sun slowly crept towards the southern meridian, clear cut in the steel blue sky. It gave us all the sympathy it could, for it shed warm rays upon us as it silently moved on its way like a great eye from Heaven, looking but unable to help. We should have gone mad with another day like this, and there were times when we came perilously close to being insane. Something had to be done. I got up from the sledge, cast my harness adrift, and said, "I am going to look for a way out; we can't go on." My companions at first persuaded me not to go, but I pointed out that we could not continue in our exhausted condition. If only we could find a camping place, and we could rest, perhaps we should be able to make a final effort to get clear.
I moved along a series of ice bridges, and the excitement gave me strength once more. I was surprised at myself for not being more giddy when I walked along the narrow ice spines, but the crampons attached to my finneskoe were like cat's claws, and without the weight of the sledge I seemed to develop a panther-like tenacity, for I negotiated the dangerous parts with the utmost ease. After some twenty minutes hunting round I came to a great ice hollow.
Down into it I went and up the other side. This hollow was free from crevasses, and when I got to the top of the ice mound opposite I saw yet another hollow. Turning round I gazed back towards where I had left our sledge. Two tiny, disconsolate figures were silhouetted against the sunlight—my two companions on our great homeward march, one sitting and one standing, probably looking for my reappearance as I vanished and was sighted again from time to time. I felt a tremendous love for those two men that day. They had trusted me so implicitly and believed in my ability to win through. I turned northward again, stepped down into the next hollow and stopped. I was in an enormous depression but not a crevasse to be seen, for the sides of the depression met quite firmly at the bottom in smooth, blue, solid ice.
In a flash I called to mind the view of the Ice Fall from the glacier on our outward journey with Captain Scott, I remembered the huge frozen waves, and hoped with all my optimistic nature that this might be the end of the great disturbance. I stood still and surveyed the wonderful valley of ice, and then fell on my knees and prayed to God that a way out would be shown me.
Then I sprang to my feet, and hurried on boldly. Clambering up the opposite slope of ice, I found a smooth, round crest over which I ran into a similar valley beyond. Frozen waves here followed in succession, and hollow followed hollow, each less in magnitude than its forerunner.
Suddenly I saw before me the smooth, shining bed of the glacier itself, and away to the north-west was the curious reddish rock under which the Mid Glacier Depot had been placed. My feelings hardly bear setting down. I was overcome with emotion, but my prayer was answered and we were saved.
I had considerable difficulty in working back to the party amongst the labyrinth of ice bridges, but I fortunately found a patch of hard snow whereon my crampons had made their mark. From here I easily traced my footmarks back, and was soon in company with my friends. They were truly relieved at my news. On consulting my watch I found that I had been away one hour. It took us actually three times as long to work our sledge out into the smooth ice of the glacier, but this reached, we camped and made some tea before marching on to the depot, which lay but a few miles from us.
We ate the last of our biscuits at this camp and finished everything but tea and sugar, then, new men, we struck our little camp, harnessed up and swept down over the smooth ice with scarcely an effort needed to move the sledge along. When we reached the depot we had another meal and slept through the night and well on into the next day.
Consulting my old Antarctic diary I see that the last sentence written on the 17th January says, "I had to keep my goggles off all day as it was a matter of life or death with us, and snow blindness must be risked after …" (a gap follows here until 29th January). The next day I had an awful attack of snow blindness, but the way down the glacier was so easy that it did not matter. I forgot whether Lashly or Crean led then, but I marched alongside, keeping in touch with the trace by hitching the lanyard of my sundial on to it and holding this in my hand. I usually carried the sundial slung round my neck, so that it was easy to pick it up and consult it. That day I was in awful pain, and although we had some dope for putting on our eyes when so smitten, I found that the greatest relief of all was obtained by bandaging my eyes with a poultice made of tea leaves after use—quaint places, quaint practices but the tip is worth considering for future generations of explorers and alpine climbers.
Our homeward march continued for day after day with no very exciting incidents. We met no more crevasses that were more than a foot or so wide, and we worked our way down on to the Great Ice Barrier with comparatively easy marches, although the distances we covered were surprising to us all—seventeen miles a day we averaged.