[Illustration:  A CORNICE OF SNOW]

The following two teams travelled to Cape Evans via the Hutton Cliffs on April 21:  1st team Scott, Wilson, Atkinson, Crean; 2nd team Bowers, Oates, Cherry-Garrard, Hooper.  It was blowing hard, as usual, at the Hutton Cliffs, and we got rather frost-bitten when lowering the sledges on to the sea-ice.  The sun was leaving us for the next four months, but luckily the light just lasted for this operation, though not for the subsequent meal which we hastily ate under the cliffs, nor for the crossing of Glacier Tongue.  Bowers wrote home: 

“I had the lighter team and, knowing what a flier Captain Scott is I took care to have the new sledge myself.  Our weights were nothing and the difference was only in the sledge runners, but it made all the difference to us that day.  Scott fairly legged it, as I expected, and we came along gaily behind him.  He could not understand it when the pace began to tell more on his heavy team than on us.  After lowering down the sledges over the cliffs we recovered the rope we had left in the first place, and then struck out over the sea-ice.  Then our good runners told so much that I owned up to mine being the better sledge, and offered to give them one of my team.  This was declined, but after we crossed the Tongue Captain Scott said he would like to change sledges at the Little Razorback.  At any time over this stretch we could have run away from his team, and once they got our sledge they started that game on us.  We expected it, and never had I stepped out so hard before.  We had been marching hard for nearly 12 hours and now we had two miles’ spurt to do, and we should have stuck it, bad runners and all, had we had smooth ice.  As it was we struck a belt of rough ice, and in the dark we all stumbled and I went down a whack, that nearly knocked me out.  This was not noticed fortunately, and still we hung on to the end of their sledge while I turned hot and cold and sick and went through the various symptoms before I got my equilibrium back, which I fortunately did while legging it at full speed.  They started to go ahead soon after that though, and we could not hold our own, although we were close to the cape.  I had the same thing happen again after another fall but we stuck it round the cape and arrived only about 50 yards behind.  I have never felt so done, and so was my team.  Of course we need not have raced, but we did, and I would do the same thing every time.  Titus produced a mug of brandy he had sharked from the ship and we all lapped it up with avidity.  The other team were just about laid out, too, so I don’t think there was much to be said either way."[133]

Two days later the sun appeared for the last time for four months.

Looking back I realized two things.  That sledging, at any rate in summer and autumn, was a much less terrible ordeal than my imagination had painted it, and that those Hut Point days would prove some of the happiest in my life.  Just enough to eat and keep us warm, no more—­no frills nor trimmings:  there is many a worse and more elaborate life.  The necessaries of civilization were luxuries to us:  and as Priestley found under circumstances compared to which our life at Hut Point was a Sunday School treat, the luxuries of civilization satisfy only those wants which they themselves create.