“Before leaving, Scott arranged to give Very Lights at 10 P.M. from Cape Evans on the first clear night of the next three.  To-night is the third, and the first clear night.  We were out punctually, and then as we watched a flare blazed up, followed by quite a firework display.  We all went wild with excitement—­knowing that all was well.  Meares ran in and soaked some awning with paraffin, and we lifted it as an answering flare and threw it into the air again and again, until it was burning in little bits all over the snow.  The relief was great."[130]

* * * * *

Bowers must tell the story of the returning party: 

“We topped the ridges and headed for Erebus beyond Castle Rock.  It looked a little threatening at first, but cleared a bit as we got on.  It was quite interesting to be breaking new ground.  Scott is a fine stepper in a sledge, and he set a fast and easy swing all the time.  It was snowing and misty when we got beyond the Hutton Cliffs, but we pitched the tents for lunch before going down the slope.  There was no doubt that a blizzard was coming up.  It cleared during lunch, which we finished about 3.30 P.M., as it had been a long morning march.

“It was just as well for us that the mist cleared, for the slope was not only crevassed in one direction, but it ended in a high ice-cliff.  By working along we found a lowish place about thirty feet down from top to bottom.  Over this we lowered men and sledges.  It had started to blow and the drift was flying off the cliff in clouds.  We put in a couple of strong male bamboos to lower the last man away, leaving the Alpine rope there to facilitate ascent (i.e. for any party returning to Hut Point with food).  We then repacked the sledges and headed across the bay towards the Glacier Tongue, where we arrived after dark about 6 P.M.  The young sea-ice was covered in a salt deposit which made it like pulling a sledge over treacle instead of ice, and it was very heavy going after the snow uplands.  The Tongue was mostly hard blue ice, which is slipperiness itself, and crevassed every few yards.  Most of these were bridged, but you were continually pushing a foot, or sometimes two, into nothingness, in the semi-darkness.  None of us, however, went down to the extent of our harness.

“Arrived on the other side we struck a sheltered dip, where we decided to camp for something to eat.  It was after 8 P.M. and I was for camping there for the night, as it seemed to me folly to venture upon a piece of untried newly frozen sea-ice in inky darkness, with a blizzard coming up behind us.  Against this of course we were only five miles from Cape Evans, and though we had hardly any grub with us, not having anticipated the cliff or the saltness of the sea-ice, and having to set out to do the journey in one day, I thought hunger in a sleeping-bag better than lying out in a blizzard on less than one foot of young ice.