[Scott wrote:  “This is the second full gale since we left the Pole.  I don’t like the look of it.  Is the weather breaking up?  If so, God help us, with the tremendous summit journey and scant food.  Wilson and Bowers are my stand-by.  I don’t like the easy way in which Oates and Evans get frost-bitten."[314]]

“January 25. It was no use turning out at our usual time (5.45 A.M.), as the blizzard was as furious as ever; we therefore decided on a late breakfast and no lunch unless able to march.  We have only three days’ food with us and shall be in Queer Street if we miss the depot.  Our bags are getting steadily wetter, so are our clothes.  It shows a tendency to clear off now (breakfast time) so, D.V., we may march after all.  I am in tribulation as regards meals now as we have run out of salt, one of my favourite commodities.  It is owing to Atkinson’s party taking back an extra tin by mistake from the Upper Glacier Depot.  Fortunately we have some depoted there, so I will only have to endure another two weeks without it.

“10 P.M.—­We have got in a march after all, thank the Lord.  Assisted by the wind we made an excellent rundown to our One and a Half Degree Depot, where the big red flag was blowing out like fury with the breeze, in clouds of driving drift.  Here we picked up 11/4 cans of oil and one week’s food for five men, together with some personal gear depoted.  We left the bamboo and flag on the cairn.  I was much relieved to pick up the depot:  now we only have one other source of anxiety on this endless snow summit, viz. the Three Degree Depot in latitude 86 deg. 56’ S.

“In the afternoon we did 5.2 miles.  It was a miserable march, blizzard all the time and our sledge either sticking in sastrugi or overrunning the traces.  We had to lower the sail half down, and Titus and I hung on to her.  It was most strenuous work, as well as much colder than pulling ahead.  Most of the time we had to brake back with all our strength to keep the sledge from overrunning.  Bill got a bad go of snow glare from following the track without goggles on.

“This day last year we started the Depot Journey.  I did not think so short a time would turn me into an old hand at polar travelling, neither did I imagine at the time that I would be returning from the Pole itself."[315]

Wilson was very subject to these attacks of snow blindness, and also to headaches before blizzards.  I have an idea that his anxiety to sketch whenever opportunity offered, and his willingness to take off his goggles to search for tracks and cairns, had something to do with it.  This attack was very typical.  “I wrote this at lunch and in the evening had a bad attack of snow blindness.” ...  “Blizzard in afternoon.  We only got in a forenoon march.  Couldn’t see enough of the tracks to follow at all.  My eyes didn’t begin to trouble me till to-morrow [yesterday], though it was the strain of tracking and the very cold drift which we had to-day