This crevasse incident, followed by the news of the loss of the ponies, was a blow to Scott, and his mind was also uneasy about Atkinson and Crean, whom we had left here, and who had disappeared leaving no record.  Nor was the report from the Terra Nova here, so we judged that the missing men and the report must be at Hut Point.  After three or four hours’ sleep, and a cup of tea and a biscuit, we started man-hauling with cooker and sleeping-bags:  the former because we were to have our good meal at the hut, the latter in case we were hung up.  Travelling over the sea-ice as far as the Gap, from which we saw that the open sea reached to Hut Point, we made our way into the hut, and there was a mystery.  The accumulations of ice which we found in it were dug away:  there was a notice outside dated February 8 saying, “mail for Captain Scott is in bag inside south door.”  We hunted everywhere, but there was no Atkinson nor Crean, nor mail, nor the things which the ship was to have brought.  All kinds of wild theories were advanced.  By the presence of a fresh onion and some bread it was clear that the ship’s party had been there, but the rest was utterly vague.  It was then suggested that we were expected back about this time, and that the missing men had been sledging to Safety Camp round Cape Armitage on the very shaky sea-ice while we passed them as we came through the Gap.  Sledge tracks were found leading on to the sea-ice:  we started back in doubt.  Scott was terribly anxious, we were all tired, and the depot never seemed to come nearer.  It was not until we were some two hundred yards from it that we saw the extra tent.  “Thank God!” I heard Scott mutter under his breath, and “I believe you were even more anxious than I was, Bill.”

Atkinson had the ship’s mail, signed by Campbell.  “Every incident of the day,” Scott wrote, “pales before the startling contents of the mail-bag which Atkinson gave me—­a letter from Campbell setting out his doings and the finding of Amundsen established in the Bay of Whales.”

[Illustration:  HUT POINT—­E.  A. Wilson, del.]

Strongly as Scott tries to word this, it quite fails to convey how he felt, and how we all felt more or less, in spite of the warning conveyed in the telegram from Madeira to Melbourne.  For an hour or so we were furiously angry, and were possessed with an insane sense that we must go straight to the Bay of Whales and have it out with Amundsen and his men in some undefined fashion or other there and then.  Such a mood could not and did not bear a moment’s reflection; but it was natural enough.  We had just paid the first instalment of the heart-breaking labour of making a path to the Pole; and we felt, however unreasonably, that we had earned the first right of way.  Our sense of co-operation and solidarity had been wrought up to an extraordinary pitch; and we had so completely forgotten the spirit of competition that its sudden intrusion jarred frightfully.  I do not defend our burst of rage—­for such it was—­I simply record it as an integral human part of my narrative.  It passed harmlessly; and Scott’s account proceeds as follows: