When the real winter came I used to walk, after winding the chronometers, until breakfast time to begin with.  This gave me half an hour, then again before lunch I would put on ski and go for a run with anybody who had not a pony to exercise.  The visibility was frequently limited, particularly on overcast days; one would glide along over the sea ice, which was in places wind-swept and in others covered with snow.  Nothing in sight but the gray-white shadow underfoot and the blue-black sky above, a streak or band just a mere smudge of daylight in the north, but this would be sufficient to give one direction to go out on.  Then slowly, dim, spectre-like shapes would appear which would gradually sort themselves out into two lots, black and white—­these were Titus’s ponies—­the white shapes, the black were the men leading them.  On they came, seemingly at a great pace, and one heard a crunching noise as the hoofs of the ponies trod down the snow crust, but one could not hear the footfalls of the men.  One exchanged a “Hallo” with the leading man and passed on until a much bigger white shape loomed up in the obscurity of the noon-twilight, the going underfoot changed and skis fetched up against a great lump of ice which was scarcely discernible in the confusing darkness, and one realised that what little light there was to the northward had been blotted out by one of the big grounded icebergs.  Directly one realised which berg it was a new course would be shaped, say to the end of the Barne Glacier; the cliffs of this reached, one proceeded homeward a league to the hut.  This could not be missed on the darkest day if the coast-line was followed, and, at last, when stomach cried out like a striking clock, one realised that it was 2 p.m. or so, and a little glow indicated the whereabouts of the hut.  Approaching it, one saw the tall chimney silhouetted against the sky, then the black shapes which oddly proclaimed themselves to be motor-sledges, store heaps or fodder dumps, and finally the hut itself.  One stumbled over the tide-crack and up on to the much trodden snow which covered the Cape Evans’s beach.  Six or seven pairs of skis stuck in the snow near the hut door indicated that most people had come in to lunch, so there was need to haste.  Off came one’s own skis, and with a lusty stab in they went heel downwards into the snow alongside the other ones, so that when a new fall came they would stand up vertically and be easily found again.

The sticks one took into the hut, because even in our well-appointed family there were pirates who borrowed them and forgot to replace them.  Entering the hut after kicking much snow from boots one passed first through the acetylene smelling porch—­Handy Andy’s pride—­as we called Day’s gas plant, then in to the seamen’s quarters, where the smell of cooking delighted and the sight of those great, hefty sailors scoffing the midday meal hustled one still more.