“At lunch camp Scott packed up and followed us.  We overhauled Atkinson about 11/2 hours later, he having camped, and we were not sorry, as in addition to marching against a fresh southerly breeze the light brought a tremendous strain on the eyes in following tracks."[193] A little more than eight miles for the day’s total.

We carried these depressing conditions for three more marches, that is till the morning of November 13.  The surface was wretched, the weather horrid, the snow persistent, covering everything with soft downy flakes, inch upon inch, and mile upon mile.  There are glimpses of despondency in the diaries.  “If this should come as an exception, our luck will be truly awful.  The camp is very silent and cheerless, signs that things are going awry."[194] “The weather was horrid, overcast, gloomy, snowy.  One’s spirits became very low."[195] “I expected these marches to be a little difficult, but not near so bad as to-day."[196] Indefinite conditions always tried Scott most:  positive disasters put him into more cheerful spirits than most.  In the big gale coming South when the ship nearly sank, and when we lost one of the cherished motors through the sea-ice, his was one of the few cheerful faces I saw.  Even when the ship ran aground off Cape Evans he was not despondent.  But this kind of thing irked him.  Bowers wrote:  “The unpleasant weather and bad surface, and Chinaman’s indisposition, combined to make the outlook unpleasant, and on arrival [in camp] I was not surprised to find that Scott had a grievance.  He felt that in arranging the consumption of forage his own unit had not been favoured with the same reduction as ours, in fact accused me of putting upon his three horses to save my own.  We went through the weights in detail after our meal, and, after a certain amount of argument, decided to carry on as we were going.  I can quite understand his feelings, and after our experience of last year a bad day like this makes him fear our beasts are going to fail us.  The Talent [i.e. the doctors] examined Chinaman, who begins to show signs of wear.  Poor ancient little beggar, he ought to be a pensioner instead of finishing his days on a job of this sort.  Jehu looks pretty rocky too, but seeing that we did not expect him to reach the Glacier Tongue, and that he has now done more than 100 miles from Cape Evans, one really does not know what to expect of these creatures.  Certainly Titus thinks, as he has always said, that they are the most unsuitable scrap-heap crowd of unfit creatures that could possibly be got together."[197]

“The weather was about as poisonous as one could wish; a fresh breeze and driving snow from the E. with an awful surface.  The recently fallen snow thickly covered the ground with powdery stuff that the unfortunate ponies fairly wallowed in.  If it was only ourselves to consider I should not mind a bit, but to see our best ponies being hit like this at the start is most distressing.  A single march like that of last night must shorten their usefulness by days, and here we are a fortnight out, and barely one-third of the distance to the glacier covered, with every pony showing signs of wear.  Victor looks a lean and lanky beast compared with his condition two weeks ago."[198]