On the way back we discussed a plan and arranged that we should leave Keohane with the pony, take a sledge, and make our way along the ice edge of the Barrier searching for Scott and joining up with him, but just before descending to the hollow where our tent was we spied a sledge party on the Barrier and, on reaching our camp, were delighted to see through my telescope six men.  Thank God!  This meant that all were safe.  We went out to meet the party, reaching them about 8 p.m. where they had camped, a couple of miles from Cape Armitage, between two pressure ridges that formed great frozen waves.  Bowers told me that when Scott’s party attempted to save the horses at the Barrier edge, rotten ice and open water leads were the cause of their downfall, and when the horses slipped into the sea, that he had been compelled to kill his own pony with a pickaxe to save him being taken alive by one of the Orcas or Killer whales.  The only horse saved was Captain Scott’s, one of the best we had in that Expedition.

I think the Irish sailors must have spoilt James Pigg, for, when eventually we got Scott’s sledge loads up to the hill-crest where our camp was, James Pigg, instead of welcoming the other pony, broke adrift, and jumping into the new-comer’s shelter, leapt on him, kicked him and bit him in the back.  On March 5 we all started for Hut Point, having previously sent in Atkinson with the good news that no men’s lives were lost.  Wilson and party met us near Castle Rock and led the ponies in while we dropped the laden sledges, full of pony harness, tents, and sledging gear, with a sufficiency of pony fodder for a fortnight, down the ski-slope to Hut Point.  It was a fine bit of toboganning and Captain Scott showed himself to be far more expert than any of us in controlling a sledge on a slippery slope.

We soon got into the way of climbing around on seemingly impossible slopes and could negotiate the steepest of hills and the slipperiest of steep inclines.  It was largely a question of good crampons, which we fortunately possessed.

The month of March and the first half of April, 1911, proved to be the most profitless and unsatisfactory part of the Expedition.  This was due to a long compulsory wait at Hut Point, for we could not cross the fifteen miles that lay between our position there and the Cape Evans Station until sea ice had formed, which could be counted on not to break away and take us into the Ross Sea in its northward drift.  Time after time the sea froze over to a depth of a foot or even more and time and again we made ready to start for Cape Evans to find that on the day of departure the ice had all broken and drifted out of sight.  As it was, we were safely, if not comfortably, housed at Hut Point, with the two dog teams and the two remaining ponies, existing in rather primitive fashion with seal meat for our principal diet.  By the end of the first week in March we had converted the veranda, which ran round three sides of the old magnetic hut,