with Captain Scott, whose intelligent, quick grasp, in emergency would surely result in Gran being despatched on ski over to Cape Evans, for he alone could do this.  Once there, a boat could have been launched and the floe party rescued.  Bowers’s satisfaction was short-lived, however, since Killer whales were noticed cruising amongst the loose ice, and these soon became numerous, some of them actually inspecting the floe by poking their noses up and taking an almost perpendicular position in the water, when their heads would be raised right above the floe edge.  The situation looked dangerous, for the whales were evidently after the ponies.  The wind fell light as the day progressed and the swell decreased and vanished altogether.  This fortunately resulted in the floes closing near to the Barrier, and the open water spaces decreased then to such a degree that the party were able to bridge the cracks by using their sledges until they worked the whole of their equipment up to the Barrier face, where Bowers and Cherry-Garrard were rescued by Scott, Oates, Gran, and Crean.  After a further piece of manoeuvring a pony and all the sledges were recovered, the three other ponies were drowned.  Only those who have served in the Antarctic can realise fully what Bowers’s party and also Scott’s own rescue party went through.

The incident which terminated in the loss of three more of our ponies cast a temporary gloom over the depot party when we reassembled in the safety of the old ramshackle magnetic lean-to at Hut Point.  I use the word lean-to because one could hardly describe it as a hut, for the building was with out insulation, snow filled the space between ceiling and roof, and whenever a fire was kindled or heat generated, water dripped down in steady pit-a-pat until there was no dry floor space worth the name.

It might be interesting to touch on the experiences of our friend James Pigg, for this pony can only be described as a quaint but friendly little rogue.  He and Keohane seemed to have their own jokes apart from us.  We were left to ourselves on the 27th February, while Scott, as stated, pushed forward to Safety Camp, “we,” meaning Atkinson, Forde, Keohane, and myself.  We were kept in camp on the 27th by a strong blizzard, and the next day when the weather abated, during our forenoon march James Pigg fell into a crevasse, quite a small one, and his girth, through so much high feeding, jammed him by his stomach and prevented him falling far down.  The whole situation was ridiculous.  We parbuckled him out by means of the Alpine rope, which was quickly detached from the sledge, James Pigg taking a lively interest in the proceedings, and finally rolling over on his back and kicking himself to his feet as we four dragged him up to the surface.  This done, Keohane looking very Irish and smiling, bent over and peered down into the bluey depths of the crevasse and, to our intense amusement, James Pigg strolled over alongside of him and hung his head down too.  He then turned to Keohane, who patted his nose and said, “That was a near shave for you, James Pigg!”