1/4 days from pony depot), reporting Keohane better after sickness.  Short note from Evans, not very cheerful, saying surface bad, temperature high.  Think he must have been a little anxious. [45] It is an immense relief to have picked up this depot and, for the time, anxieties are thrust aside.  There is no doubt we have been rising steadily since leaving the Shambles Camp.  The coastal Barrier descends except where glaciers press out.  Undulation still but flattening out.  Surface soft on top, curiously hard below.  Great difference now between night and day temperatures.  Quite warm as I write in tent.  We are on tracks with half-march cairn ahead; have covered 4 1/2 miles.  Poor Wilson has a fearful attack snow-blindness consequent on yesterday’s efforts.  Wish we had more fuel.

Night camp R. 38.  Temp. -17 deg..  A little despondent again.  We had a really terrible surface this afternoon and only covered 4 miles.  We are on the track just beyond a lunch cairn.  It really will be a bad business if we are to have this pulling all through.  I don’t know what to think, but the rapid closing of the season is ominous.  It is great luck having the horsemeat to add to our ration.  To-night we have had a real fine ‘hoosh.’  It is a race between the season and hard conditions and our fitness and good food.

Saturday, February 25.—­Lunch Temp. -12 deg..  Managed just 6 miles this morning.  Started somewhat despondent; not relieved when pulling seemed to show no improvement.  Bit by bit surface grew better, less sastrugi, more glide, slight following wind for a time.  Then we began to travel a little faster.  But the pulling is still very hard; undulations disappearing but inequalities remain.

Twenty-six Camp walls about 2 miles ahead, all tracks in sight—­Evans’ track very conspicuous.  This is something in favour, but the pulling is tiring us, though we are getting into better ski drawing again.  Bowers hasn’t quite the trick and is a little hurt at my criticisms, but I never doubted his heart.  Very much easier—­write diary at lunch—­excellent meal—­now one pannikin very strong tea—­four biscuits and butter.

Hope for better things this afternoon, but no improvement apparent.  Oh! for a little wind—­E.  Evans evidently had plenty.

R. 39.  Temp. -20 deg..  Better march in afternoon.  Day yields 11.4 miles—­the first double figure of steady dragging for a long time, but it meant and will mean hard work if we can’t get a wind to help us.  Evans evidently had a strong wind here, S.E.  I should think.  The temperature goes very low at night now when the sky is clear as at present.  As a matter of fact this is wonderfully fair weather—­the only drawback the spoiling of the surface and absence of wind.  We see all tracks very plain, but the pony-walls have evidently been badly drifted up.  Some kind people had substituted a cairn at last camp 27.  The old cairns do not seem to have suffered much.