Before we started Scott walked over to Bowers.  “I have come to a decision which will shock you.”  Victor was to go at the end of the march, because pony food was running so short.  Birdie wrote at the end of the day:—­He “did a splendid march and kept ahead all day, and as usual marched into camp first, pulling over 450 lbs. easily.  It seemed an awful pity to have to shoot a great strong animal, and it seemed like the irony of fate to me, as I had been downed for over-provisioning the ponies with needless excess of food, and the drastic reductions had been made against my strenuous opposition up to the last.  It is poor satisfaction to me to know that I was right now that my horse is dead.  Good old Victor!  He has always had a biscuit out of my ration, and he ate his last before the bullet sent him to his rest.  Here ends my second horse in 83 deg.  S., not quite so tragically as my first when the sea-ice broke up, but none the less I feel sorry for a beast that has been my constant companion and care for so long.  He has done his share in our undertaking anyhow, and may I do my share as well when I get into harness myself.

“The snow has started to fall over his bleak resting-place, and it looks like a blizzard.  The outlook is dark, stormy and threatening.”

Indeed it had been a dismal march into a blank white wall, and the ponies were sinking badly in the snow, leaving holes a full foot deep.  The temperature was +17 deg. and the flakes of snow melted when they lay on the dark colours of the tents and our furs.  After building the pony walls water was running down our windproofs.

I note “we are doing well on pony meat and go to bed very content.”  Notwithstanding the fact that we could not do more than heat the meat by throwing it into the pemmican we found it sweet and good, though tough.  The man-hauling party consisted of Lieut.  Evans and Lashly who had lost their motors, and Atkinson and Wright who had lost their ponies.  They were really quite hungry by now, and most of us pretty well looked forward to our meals and kept a biscuit to eat in our bags if we could.  The pony meat therefore came as a relief.  I think we ought to have depoted more of it on the cairns.  As it was, what we did not eat was given to the dogs.  With some tins of extra oil and a depoted pony the Polar Party would probably have got home in safety.

On December 3 we roused out at 2.30 A.M.  It was thick and snowy.  As we breakfasted the blizzard started from the south-east, and was soon blowing force 9, a full gale, with heavy drift.  “The strongest wind I have known here in summer."[210] It was impossible to start, but we turned out and made up the pony walls in heavy drift, one of them being blown down three times.  By 1.30 P.M. the sun was shining, and the land was clear.  We started at 2, with what we thought was Mount Hope showing up ahead, but soon great snow-clouds were banking up and in two hours we were walking in a deep gloom which made it difficult to find the track made by the man-hauling party ahead.  By the time we reached the cairn, which was always built at the end of the first four miles, it was blowing hard from the N.N.W. of all the unlikely quarters of the compass.  Bowers and Scott were on ski.