* * * * *

Scott’s own diary of this first fortnight on the plateau shows the immense shove of the man:  he was getting every inch out of the miles, every ounce out of his companions.  Also he was in a hurry, he always was.  That blizzard which had delayed him just before the Gateway, and the resulting surfaces which had delayed him in the lower reaches of the glacier!  One can feel the averages running through his brain:  so many miles to-day:  so many more to-morrow.  When shall we come to an end of this pressure?  Can we go straight or must we go more west?  And then the great undulating waves with troughs eight miles wide, and the buried mountains, causing whirlpools in the ice—­how immense, and how annoying.  The monotonous march:  the necessity to keep the mind concentrated to steer amongst disturbances:  the relief of a steady plod when the disturbances cease for a time:  then more pressure and more crevasses.  Always slog on, slog on.  Always a fraction of a mile more....  On December 30 he writes, “We have caught up Shackleton’s dates."[249]

They made wonderful marches, averaging nearly fifteen statute miles (13 geog.) a day for the whole-day marches until the Second Return Party turned back on January 4.  Scott writes on December 26, “It seems astonishing to be disappointed with a march of 15 (statute) miles when I had contemplated doing little more than 10 with full loads."[250]

The Last Returning Party came back with the news that Scott must reach the Pole with the greatest ease.  This seemed almost a certainty:  and yet it was, as we know now, a false impression.  Scott’s plans were based on Shackleton’s averages over the same country.  The blizzard came and put him badly behind:  but despite this he caught Shackleton up.  No doubt the general idea then was that Scott was going to have a much easier time than he had expected.  We certainly did not realize then, and I do not think Scott himself had any notion of, the price which had been paid.

Of the three teams of four men each which started from the bottom of the Beardmore, Scott’s team was a very long way the strongest:  it was the team which, with one addition, went to the Pole.  Lieutenant Evans’ team had mostly done a lot of man-hauling already:  it was hungry and I think a bit stale.  Bowers’ team was fresh and managed to keep up for the most part, but it was very done at the end of the day.  Scott’s own team went along with comparative ease.  From the top of the glacier two teams went on during the last fortnight of which we have been speaking.  The first of them was Scott’s unit complete, just as it had pulled up the glacier.  The second team consisted, I believe, of the men whom Scott considered to be the strongest; two from Evans’ team, and two from Bowers’.  All Scott’s team were fresh to the extent that they had done no man-hauling until we started up the glacier.  But two of the other team, Lieutenant Evans and Lashly, had been man-hauling since the breakdown of the second motor on November 1.  They had man-hauled four hundred statute miles farther than the rest.  Indeed Lashly’s man-hauling journey from Corner Camp to beyond 87 deg. 32’ S., and back, is one of the great feats of polar travelling.