so he added one more link to a chain.  But he was content; and four days after the Last Return Party left them, as he lay out a blizzard, quite warm in his sleeping-bag though the mid-day temperature was -20 deg., he wrote a long diary praising his companions very highly indeed “so our five people are perhaps as happily selected as it is possible to imagine."[294] He speaks of Seaman Evans as being a giant worker with a really remarkable headpiece.  There is no mention of the party feeling the cold, though they were now at the greatest height of their journey; the food satisfied them thoroughly.  There is no shadow of trouble here:  only Evans has got a nasty cut on his hand!

There were more disadvantages in this five-man party than you might think.  There was 51/2 weeks’ food for four men:  five men would eat this in about four weeks.  In addition to the extra risk of breakdown, there was a certain amount of discomfort involved, for everything was arranged for four men as I have already explained; the tent was a four-man tent, and an inner lining had been lashed to the bamboos making it smaller still:  when stretched out for the night the sleeping-bags of the two outside men must have been partly off the floor-cloth, and probably on the snow:  their bags must have been touching the inner tent and collecting the rime which was formed there:  cooking for five took about half an hour longer in the day than cooking for four—­half an hour off your sleep, or half an hour off your march?  I do not believe that five men on the lid of a crevasse are as safe as four.  Wilson writes that the stow of the sledge with five sleeping-bags was pretty high:  this makes it top-heavy and liable to capsize in rough country.

But what would have paralysed anybody except Bowers was the fact that they had only four pairs of ski between the five of them.  To slog along on foot, in soft snow, in the middle of four men pulling rhythmically on ski, must have been tiring and even painful; and Birdie’s legs were very short.  No steady swing for him, and little chance of getting his mind off the job in hand.  Scott could never have meant to take on five men when he told his supporting team to leave their ski behind, only four days before he reorganized.

“May I be there!” wrote Wilson of the men chosen to travel the ice-cap to the Pole.  “About this time next year may I be there or thereabouts!  With so many young bloods in the heyday of youth and strength beyond my own I feel there will be a most difficult task in making choice towards the end.”  “I should like to have Bill to hold my hand when we get to the Pole,” said Scott.