On October 18th the condition of the sledges obliged them to return. Only one remained sound. On the others the German silver on the runners was split to ribbons and the wood deeply scored. Leaving the sound sledge and a large depôt they hurried back to the ship, the last march covering 36 miles. The sledges were repaired, and Ferrar now took a smaller 7 ft. sledge. The final start was made on October 26th; and they crossed the sea ice at a rate of 25 miles a day. There was continual trouble with the runners, and Mr Skelton with the stokers of the party were kept at work with pliers, files, and hammers, stripping off the torn metal and lapping fresh pieces over the weak places.
On November 3rd they had reached a height of 7000 ft. The majestic cliffs were below them and they gazed over the summits of mountains to the eastward. Next day it was blowing a full gale, and there was only just time to get the tents up when it burst upon them. It was a week before they were able to move again, and throughout the whole time the gale raged incessantly.
The delight of being able to start again may be imagined, and on the 13th they had reached the summit at a height of 8900 ft. with five weeks’ provisions in hand. They found themselves on a great snow plain with a level horizon all round, but above it to the east rose the tops of mountains. Captain Scott had discovered the great Antarctic ice-cap.
The gale had blown away the nautical tables so that the observations could not be worked out until their return. Scott’s inventive talent came into play. He could calculate the declination for certain fixed days, and having ruled a sheet of his note-paper in squares, he plotted these points on the squares, and joined them with a curve. It was afterwards found that the curve was nowhere more than 4′ in error. It gave him the latitude with as much accuracy as was needed at the time.
The cold on the ice-cap was intense, -44° Fahr. But they had reached the lofty plateau, leaving the mountain peaks behind, and before them lay the unknown. Scott resolved to press onwards. On November 22nd he went on with Evans and Lashly, the rest returning.
From a magnetic point of view this was a very interesting region. The travellers were directly south of the magnetic pole, and the north end of the compass pointed south, or a variation of 180°!
Of Scott’s two companions, Evans, who had been a gymnastic instructor in the navy, was a man of herculean strength. Lashly had been a non-smoker and a teetotaller all his life, and had the largest chest measurement in the ship. The progress made was rapid, though they had to struggle over a sea of broken and distorted snow-waves, causing frequent capsizes of the far-too-narrow sledge. The night temperature continued as low as -40°, and, judging from the sastrugi, the wind blows from west to east across the ice-cap, often with great violence, and as the summer temperature is -40° the cold of the winter may be imagined. The little party of three resolutely pushed on to the westward until November 30th. They had gone for 200 miles over the ice-cap, and could see nothing beyond but a further expanse of the terrible plateau. Yet, “After all,” writes Scott,
“it is not what we see that inspires awe, but the knowledge of what lies beyond our view. We see only a few miles of ruffled snow bounded by a vague wavy horizon, but we know that beyond that horizon are hundreds and even thousands of miles which offer no change to the weary eye ... nothing but this terrible limitless expanse of snow. It has been so for countless ages and it will be so for countless more.... Could anything be more terrible than this silent wind-swept immensity?”
On December 1st the little party turned their steps homewards. Day by day they struggled on over rough snow ridges in thick weather. On the 15th all were precipitated down a steep slope for 200 ft., finding themselves sore and bruised at the bottom, and near the upper entrance of the glacier. It was a month since Scott had seen any known landmark. They started again, Scott in the middle and a little in front, Lashly on his right, and Evans on his left. They had been going for a quarter of an hour when Scott and Evans suddenly disappeared down a crevasse. Almost by a miracle Lashly saved himself from following, and sprang back with his whole weight on the trace. The sledge rushed past him and jumped the crevasse down which Scott and Evans had gone. The two who had fallen were dangling at the ends of their traces with blue walls of ice on each side and a fathomless abyss below. Scott struggled on to a thin shaft of ice wedged between the walls of the chasm, guiding Evans’s feet to the same support. The great danger was that the intense cold would soon render them powerless. There was no time to lose, and Scott by a desperate effort managed to swarm up the trace and flung himself on the snow. With the united efforts of Scott and Lashly Evans was also landed on the surface. Both were terribly frost-bitten. On the same evening they reached their nunatak depôt and next day, by a long march, arrived at the main depôt. There were no further troubles, and the three reached the ship on the 23rd December.
In his absence of fifty-nine days Scott and his companions had travelled over 725 miles, but for nine days they had been confined to the tent by gales of wind. The distance, therefore, was accomplished in fifty marching days, a daily average of 14½ miles. Taking the whole eighty-one days of absence they had covered 1098 miles at a little under 15½ miles a day. They had reached the limit of possible performance, under the hardest conditions.