On December 1 we began to converge the coast rapidly, and we were only thirty miles from the nearest land.  The view magnificent, though lonely and awful in its silence.  One would very soon go mad without company down here.

December 1 saw the end of “Christopher,” but as the soldier fired his pistol at him the pony threw up his head and the bullet failed to kill, although passing through the beast’s forehead.  Christopher ran to the lines bleeding profusely, but Keohane and I kept him from the other ponies, and Oates shortly after put another bullet into the wretched animal, which dropped him.  Christopher was no loss, as he gave endless trouble on the Barrier march.  However, he was tender enough, as we found when Meares cut him up for the dogs and brought our tent a fine piece of undercut.

On December 2 we had a trying time, starting off in a perfectly poisonous light, which strained our eyes and made them very painful.  It snowed almost incessantly throughout the day.  Nevertheless we had a dim, sickly sun visible which helped the steering.  As the pony food was running short the pony “Victor” was shot on camping.

I visited Meares and Dimitri in the dog-tent, and they gave me some “overs” in the shape of cocoa and biscuit, for which I was truly grateful, as I had been hungry for a month.

A blizzard started on December 4, which delayed us for some hours.  Our party found it had a surplus of 27 whole biscuits—­no one could account for this; we told Bowers, however, and he did not seem surprised, so I think he shoved in a few biscuits here and there.  He told me that some tins carried 2 lb. more than was marked on them.  We covered about 13 miles despite the bad weather beginning the day.

On December 4 we arrived within 12 miles of Shackleton’s gap or Southern Gateway:  we could see the outflow of the Beardmore Glacier stretching away to our left like a series of huge tumbling waves.  As we advanced southwards hopes ran high, for we still had the dogs and five ponies to help us.  Scott expected to camp on the Beardmore itself after the next march, but bad luck, alas, was against us.  The land visible extended from S.S.W. through S. to N.W.  More wonderful peaks or wedge-shaped spines of snow-capped rock.  The first and least exciting stage of our journey was practically complete.  A fifth pony was sacrificed to the hungry dogs—­“Michael,” of whom Cherry Garrard had only good words to say—­but then the altruistic Cherry only spoke good words.  We did over 17 miles on December 4, heading for the little tributary glacier which Shackleton named the Gap; it bore S. 9 degrees E. fifteen miles distant when we put up our tent.

Whilst marching well ahead of the pony party we unconsciously dropped into a hollow of an undulation, and foolishly did not spot it when we paused to build a cairn.  Continuing our march we looked back to find no cairn.  This first indicated to us the existence of undulations in the neighbourhood, and we frequently lost the ponies to view.