they came to the conclusion, on slender evidence, that they were still too near the land.  They had an unhappy march still off the tracks, “but just as we decided to lunch, Bowers’ wonderful sharp eyes detected an old double lunch cairn, the theodolite telescope confirmed it, and our spirits rose accordingly."[343] Then Wilson had another “bad attack of snow-glare:  could hardly keep a chink of eye open in goggles to see the course.  Fat pony hoosh."[344] This day they reached the Lower Barrier Depot.

[Illustration:  SLEDGING IN A HIGH WIND—­E.  A. Wilson, del.]

They were in evil case, but they would have been all right, these men, if the cold had not come down upon them, a bolt quite literally from the blue of a clear sky:  unexpected, unforetold and fatal.  The cold itself was not so tremendous until you realize that they had been out four months, that they had fought their way up the biggest glacier in the world in feet of soft snow, that they had spent seven weeks under plateau conditions of rarefied air, big winds and low temperatures, and they had watched one of their companions die—­not in a bed, in a hospital or ambulance, nor suddenly, but slowly, night by night and day by day, with his hands frost-bitten and his brain going, until they must have wondered, each man in his heart, whether in such case a human being could be left to die, that four men might live.  He died a natural death and they went out on to the Barrier.

Given such conditions as were expected, and the conditions for which preparation had been made, they would have come home alive and well.  Some men say the weather was abnormal:  there is some evidence that it was.  The fact remains that the temperature dropped into the minus thirties by day and the minus forties by night.  The fact also remains that there was a great lack of southerly winds, and in consequence the air near the surface was not being mixed:  excessive radiation took place, and a layer of cold air formed near the ground.  Crystals also formed on the surface of the snow and the wind was not enough to sweep them away.  As the temperature dropped so the surface for the runners of the sledges became worse, as I explained elsewhere.[345] They were pulling as it were through sand.

In the face of the difficulties which beset them their marches were magnificent:  111/2 miles on February 25 and again on the following day:  12.2 miles on February 27, and 111/2 miles again on February 28 and 29.  If they could have kept this up they would have come through without a doubt.  But I think it was about now that they suspected, and then were sure, that they could not pull through.  Scott’s diary, written at lunch, March 2, is as follows: