lived, a brave, true man--the best of comrades and staunchest of
friends."[139]

Physically Scott had been a delicate boy but developed into a strong man,
5 feet 9 inches in height, 11 stone 6 lbs. in weight, with a chest
measurement of 391/4 inches. Wilson was not a particularly strong man. On
leaving with the Discovery he was but lately cured of consumption, yet he
went with Scott to his farthest South, and helped to get Shackleton back
alive. Shackleton owed his life to those two. Wilson was of a slimmer,
more athletic build, a great walker, 5 feet 101/2 inches in height, 11
stones in weight, with a chest measurement of 36 inches. He was an ideal
example of my contention, which I believe can be proved many times over
to be a fact, that it is not strength of body but rather strength of will
which carries a man farthest where mind and body are taxed at the same
time to their utmost limit. Scott was 43 years of age at his death, and
Wilson 39.

Bowers was of a very different build. Aged 28, he was only 5 feet 4
inches in height while his chest measurement (which I give more as a
general guide to his physique than for any other reason) was 40 inches,
and his weight 12 stones. He was recommended to Scott by Sir Clements
Markham, who was dining one day with Captain Wilson-Barker on the
Worcester, on which ship Bowers was trained. Bowers was then home from
India, and the talk turned to the Antarctic. Wilson-Barker turned to Sir
Clements in the course of conversation and alluding to Bowers said: "Here
is a man who will be leading one of those expeditions some day."

He lived a rough life after passing from the Worcester into the merchant
service, sailing five times round the world in the Loch Torridon. Thence
he passed into the service of the Royal Indian Marine, commanded a river
gunboat on the Irrawaddy, and afterwards served on H.M.S. Fox, where he
had considerable experience, often in open boats, preventing the
gun-running which was carried on by the Afghans in the Persian Gulf.

Thence he came to us.

It is at any rate a curious fact, and it may be a significant one, that
Bowers, who enjoyed a greater resistance to cold than any man on this
expedition, joined it direct from one of the hottest places on the globe.
My knowledge is insufficient to say whether it is possible that any trace
can be found here of cause and effect, especially since the opposite
seems to be the more common experience, in that such people as return
from India to England generally find the English winter trying. I give
the fact for what it may be worth, remarking only that the cold of an
English winter is generally damp, while that of the Antarctic is dry, so
far at any rate as the atmosphere is concerned. Bowers himself always
professed the greatest indifference not only to cold, but also to heat,
and his indifference was not that of a 'poseur,' as many experiences will
show.

At the same time he was temperamentally one who refused to admit
difficulties. Indeed, if he did not actually welcome them he greeted them
with scorn, and in scorning went far to master them. Scott believed that
difficulties were made to be overcome: Bowers certainly believed that he
was the man to overcome them. This self-confidence was based on a very
deep and broad religious feeling, and carried conviction with it. The men
swore by him both on the ship and ashore. "He's all right," was their
judgment of his seamanship, which was admirable. "I like being with
Birdie, because I always know where I am," was the remark made to me by
an officer one evening as we pitched the tent. We had just been spending
some time in picking up a depot which a less able man might well have
missed.

As he was one of the two or three greatest friends of my life I find it
hard to give the reader a mental picture of Birdie Bowers which will not
appear extravagant. There were times when his optimism appeared forced
and formal though I believe it was not really so: there were times when I
have almost hated him for his infernal cheerfulness. To those accustomed
to judge men by the standards of their fashionable and corseted
drawing-rooms Bowers appeared crude. "You couldn't kill that man if you
took a pole-axe to him," was the comment of a New Zealander at a dance at
Christchurch. Such men may be at a discount in conventional life; but
give me a snowy ice-floe waving about on the top of a black swell, a ship
thrown aback, a sledge-party almost shattered, or one that has just upset
their supper on to the floorcloth of the tent (which is much the same
thing), and I will lie down and cry for Bowers to come and lead me to
food and safety.

Those whom the gods love die young. The gods loved him, if indeed it be
benevolent to show your favourites a clear, straight, shining path of
life, with plenty of discomfort and not a little pain, but with few
doubts and no fears. Browning might well have had Bowers in mind when he
wrote of

One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward;
Never doubted clouds would break;
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph;
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

There was nothing subtle about him. He was transparently simple,
straightforward and unselfish. His capacity for work was prodigious, and
when his own work happened to take less than his full time he
characteristically found activity in serving a scientist or exercising an
animal. So he used to help to send up balloons with self-recording
instruments attached to them, and track the threads which led to them
when detached. He was responsible for putting up the three outlying
meteorological screens and read them more often than anybody else. At
times he looked after some of the dogs because at the moment there was
nobody else whose proper job it happened to be, and he took a particular
fancy to one of our strongest huskies called Krisravitza, which is the
Russian (so I'm told) for 'most beautiful.' This fancy originated in the
fact that to Kris, as the most truculent of our untamed devils, fell a
large share of well-deserved punishment. A living thing in trouble be it
dog or man was something to be helped. Being the smallest man in the
party he schemed to have allotted to him the largest pony available both
for the Depot and Polar Journeys. Their exercise, when he succeeded, was
a matter for experiment, for his knowledge of horses was as limited as
his love of animals was intense. He started to exercise his second pony
(for the first was lost on the floe) by riding him. "I'll soon get used
to him," he said one day when Victor had just deposited him in the
tide-crack, "to say nothing of his getting used to me," he added in a
more subdued voice.

This was open-air work, and as such more congenial than that which had to
be done inside the hut. But his most important work was indoors, and he
brought to it just the same restless enthusiasm which allowed no leisure
for reading or relaxation.

He joined as one of the ship's officers in London. Given charge of the
stores, the way in which he stowed the ship aroused the admiration of
even the stevedores, especially when he fell down the main hatch one
morning on to the pig-iron below, recovered consciousness in about half a
minute, and continued work for the rest of the day as though nothing had
happened.

As the voyage out proceeded it became obvious that his knowledge of the
stores and undefeatable personality would be of great value to the shore
party, and it was decided that he should land, to his great delight. He
was personally responsible for all food supplies, whether for home
consumption or for sledging, for all sledging stores and the distribution
of weights, the loading of sledges, the consumption of coal, the issue of
clothing, bosun's stores, and carpenter's stores. Incidentally the keeper
of stores wanted a very exact knowledge of the cases which contained
them, for the drifts of snow soon buried them as they lay in the camp
outside.

As time proved his capacity Scott left one thing after another in
Bowers' hands. Scott was a leader of men, and it is a good quality in
such to delegate work from themselves on to those who prove their power
to shoulder the burden. Undoubtedly Bowers saved Scott a great deal of
work, and gave him time which he might not otherwise have been able to
spare to interest himself in the scientific work of the station, greatly
to its benefit, and do a good deal of useful writing. The two ways in
which Bowers helped Scott most this winter were in the preparation of the
plans and the working out of the weights of the Southern Journey, which
shall be discussed later, and in the routine work of the station, for
which he was largely responsible, and which ran so smoothly that I am
unable to tell the reader how the stores were issued, or the dinner
settled, by what rule the working parties for fetching ice for water and
other kindred jobs about the camp were ordered. They just happened, and I
don't know how. I only know that Bowers had the bunk above mine in the
hut, and that when I was going to sleep he was generally standing on a
chair and using his own bunk as a desk, and I conclude from the numerous
lists of stores and weights which are now in my hands that these were
being produced. Anyway the job was done, and the fact that we knew
nothing about it goes far to prove how efficiently it was carried
through.

For him difficulties simply did not exist. I have never known a more
buoyant, virile nature. Scott's writings abound in references to the
extraordinary value he placed upon his help, and after the share which he
took in the Depot and Winter Journeys it was clear that he would probably
be taken in the Polar Party, as indeed proved to be the case. No man of
that party better deserved his place. "I believe he is the hardest
traveller that ever undertook a Polar Journey, as well as one of the most
undaunted."[140]

The standard is high.

[Illustration: FROZEN SEA AND CLIFFS OF ICE]

Bowers gave us two of our best lectures, the first on the Evolution of
Sledge Foods, at the end of which he discussed our own rations on the
Depot Journey, and made suggestions which he had worked out
scientifically for those of the Polar Journey. His arguments were sound
enough to disarm the hostility if not to convert to his opinions at least
one scientist who had come to hear him strongly of opinion that an
untrained man should not discuss so complex a subject. The second
lecture, on the Evolution of Polar Clothing, was also the fruit of much
work. The general conclusion come to (and this was after the Winter
Journey) was that our own clothing and equipment could not be bettered in
any important respect, though it must be always understood that the
expedition wore wind-proof clothing and not furs, except for hands and
feet. When man-hauling, wind-proof, I am convinced, cannot be improved
upon, but for dog-driving in cold weather I suspect that furs may be
better.

The table was cleared after supper and we sat round it for these lectures
three times a week. There was no compulsion about them, and the seamen
only turned up for those which especially interested them, such as
Meares' vivid account of his journeyings on the Eastern or Chinese
borderland of Thibet. This land is inhabited by the 'Eighteen Tribes,'
the original inhabitants of Thibet who were driven out by the present
inhabitants, and Meares told us chiefly of the Lolos who killed his
companion Brook after having persuaded him that they were friendly and
anxious to help him. "He had no pictures and very makeshift maps, yet he
held us really entranced for nearly two hours by the sheer interest of
his adventures. The spirit of the wanderer is in Meares' blood: he has no
happiness but in the wild places of the earth. I have never met so
extreme a type. Even now he is looking forward to getting away by himself
to Hut Point, tired already of our scant measure of civilization."[141]

Three lectures a week were too many in the opinion of the majority. The
second winter with our very reduced company we had two a week, and I feel
sure that this was an improvement. No officer nor seaman, however, could
have had too many of Ponting's lectures, which gave us glimpses into
many lands illustrated by his own inimitable slides. Thus we lived every
now and then for a short hour in Burmah, India or Japan, in scenes of
trees and flowers and feminine charm which were the very antithesis of
our present situation, and we were all the better for it. Ponting also
illustrated the subjects of other lectures with home-made slides of
photographs taken during the autumn or from printed books. But for the
most part the lecturers were perforce content with designs and plans,
drawn on paper and pinned one on the top of the other upon a large
drawing-board propped up on the table and torn off sheet by sheet.

From the practical point of view the most interesting evening to us was
that on which Scott produced the Plan of the Southern Journey. The reader
may ask why this was not really prepared until the winter previous to the
journey itself, and the answer clearly is that it was impossible to
arrange more than a rough idea until the autumn sledging had taught its
lesson in food, equipment, relative reliability of dogs, ponies and men,
and until the changes and chances of our life showed exactly what
transport would be available for the following sledging season. Thus it
was with lively anticipation that we sat down on May 8, an advisory
committee as it were, to hear and give our suggestions on the scheme
which Scott had evolved in the early weeks of the winter after the
adventures of the Depot Journey and the loss of six ponies.

It was on just such a winter night, too, that Scott read his interesting
paper on the Ice Barrier and Inland Ice which will probably form the
basis for all future work on these subjects. The Barrier, he maintained,
is probably afloat, and covers at least five times the extent of the
North Sea with an average thickness of some 400 feet, though it has only
been possible to get the very roughest of levels. According to the
movement of a depot laid in the Discovery days the Barrier moved 608
yards towards the open Ross Sea in 131/2 months. It must be admitted that
the inclination of the ice-sheet is not sufficient to cause this, and the
old idea that the glacier streams flowing down from Inland Plateau
provide the necessary impetus is imperfect. It was Simpson's suggestion
that "the deposition of snow on the Barrier leads to an expansion due to
the increase of weight." Some admittedly vague ideas as to the extent and
character of the inland ice-sheet ended a clever and convincing paper
which contained a lot of good reasoning.

Simpson proved an excellent lecturer, and in meteorology and in the
explanation of the many instruments with which his corner of the hut was
full he possessed subjects which interested and concerned everybody.
Nelson on Biological Problems and Taylor on Physiography were always
interesting. "Taylor, I dreamt of your lecture last night. How could I
live so long in the world and not know something of so fascinating a
subject!" Thus Scott on the morning following one of these lectures.[142]
Wright on Ice Problems, Radium, and the Origin of Matter had highly
technical subjects which left many of us somewhat befogged. But Atkinson
on Scurvy had an audience each member of which felt that he had a
personal interest in the subject under discussion. Indeed one of his
hearers was to suffer the advanced stage of this dread disease within six
months. Atkinson inclined to Almroth Wright's theory that scurvy is due
to an acid intoxication of the blood caused by bacteria. He described the
litmus-paper test which was practised on us monthly, and before and after
sledge journeys. In this the blood of each individual is drawn and
various strengths of dilute sulphuric acid are added to it until it is
neutralized, the healthy man showing normal 30 to 50, while the man with
scorbutic signs will be normal 50 to 90 according to the stage to which
he has reached. The only thing which is certain to stop scurvy is fresh
vegetables: fresh meat when life is otherwise under extreme conditions
will not do so, an instance being the Siege of Paris when they had plenty
of horse meat. In 1795 voyages were being ruined by scurvy and Anson lost
300 out of 500 men, but in that year the first discoveries were made and
lime-juice was introduced by Blaine. From this time scurvy practically
disappeared from the Navy, and there was little scurvy in Nelson's days;
but the reason is not clear, since, according to modern research,
lime-juice only helps to prevent it. It continued in the Merchant
Service, and in a decade from about 1865 some 400 cases were admitted
into the Dreadnought Hospital, whereas in the decade 1887 to 1896 there
were only 38 cases. We had, at Cape Evans, a salt of sodium to be used to
alkalize the blood as an experiment, if necessity arose. Darkness, cold,
and hard work are in Atkinson's opinion important causes of scurvy.

Nansen was an advocate of variety of diet as being anti-scorbutic, and
Scott recalled a story told him by Nansen which he had never understood.
It appeared that some men had eaten tins of tainted food. Some of it was
slightly tainted, some of it was really bad. They rejected the really bad
ones, and ate those only which were slightly tainted. "And of course,"
said Nansen, "they should have eaten the worst."

I have since asked Nansen about this story. He tells me that he must have
been referring to the crew of the Windward, the ship of the
Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition to Franz Josef Land in 1894-97. The crew of
this ship, which was travelling to and from civilization, got scurvy,
though the land party kept healthy. Of this Jackson writes: "In the case
of the crew of the Windward I fear that there was considerable
carelessness in the use of tinned meats that were not free from taint,
although tins quite gone were rejected.... We [on shore] largely used
fresh bear's meat, and the crew of the Windward were also allowed as much
as they could be induced to eat. They, however, preferred tinned meat
several days a week to a diet of bear's meat alone; and some of the crew
had such a prejudice against bear's meat as to refuse to eat it at
all."[143]

Of course tainted food should not have been eaten at all, but if it had
to be eaten, then, according to Nansen, the ptomaines which cause scurvy
in the earlier stages of decomposition are destroyed by the ferment which
forms in the later stages. They should therefore have taken the worst
tins, if any at all.

Wilson was strongly of opinion that fresh meat alone would stop scurvy:
on the Discovery seal meat cured it. As to scurvy on Scott's Discovery
Southern Journey, he made light of it: however, during the Winter Journey
I remember Wilson stating that Shackleton several times fell in a faint
as he got outside the tent, and he seems to have been seriously ill:
Wilson knew that he himself had scurvy some time before the others knew
it, because the discoloration of his gums did not show in front for some
time. He did not think their dogs on that journey had scurvy, but
ptomaine poisoning from fish which had travelled through the tropics. He
was of opinion that on returning from sledge journeys on the Discovery
they had wrongly attributed to scurvy such symptoms as rash on the body,
swollen legs and ankles, which were rather the result of excessive
fatigue. I may add that we had these signs on our return from the Winter
Journey.

Then there were lectures on Geology by Debenham, on birds and beasts and
also on Sketching by Wilson, on Surveying by Evans: but perhaps no
lecture remains more vividly in my memory than that given by Oates on
what _we_ called 'The Mismanagement of Horses.' Of course to all of us
who were relying upon the ponies for the first stage of the Southern
Journey the subject was of interest as well as utility, but the greater
share of interest centred upon the lecturer, for it was certainly
supposed that taciturn Titus could not have concealed about his person
the gift of the gab, and it was as certain as it could be that the whole
business was most distasteful to him. Imagine our delight when he proved
to have an elaborate discourse with full notes of which no one had seen
the preparation. "I have been fortunate in securing another night," he
mentioned amidst mirth, and proceeded to give us the most interesting and
able account of the minds and bodies of horses in general and ours in
particular. He ended with a story of a dinner-party at which he was a
guest, probably against his will. A young lady was so late that the party
sat down to dinner without waiting longer. Soon she arrived covered with
blushes and confusion. "I'm so sorry," she said, "but that horse was the
limit, he ..." "Perhaps it was a jibber," suggested her hostess to help
her out. "No, he was a ----. I heard the cabby tell him so several
times."

Titus Oates was the most cheerful and lovable old pessimist that you
could imagine. Often, after tethering and feeding our ponies at a night
camp on the Barrier, we would watch the dog-teams coming up into camp.
"I'll give these dogs ten days more," he would murmur in a voice such as
some people used when they heard of a British victory. I am acquainted
with so few dragoons that I do not know their general characteristics.
Few of them, I imagine, would have gone about with the slouch which
characterized his method of locomotion, nor would many of them have dined
in a hat so shabby that it was picked off the peg and passed round as a
curiosity.

He came to look after the horses, and as an officer in the Inniskillings
he, no doubt, had excellent training. But his skill went far deeper than
that. There was little he didn't know about horses, and the pity is that
he did not choose our ponies for us in Siberia: we should have had a very
different lot. In addition to his general charge of them all, Oates took
as his own pony the aforesaid devil Christopher for the Southern Journey
and for previous training. We shall hear much more of Christopher, who
appeared to have come down to the Antarctic to initiate the well-behaved
inhabitants into all the vices of civilization, but from beginning to end
Oates' management of this animal might have proved a model to any
governor of a lunatic asylum. His tact, patience and courage, for
Christopher was a very dangerous beast, remain some of the most vivid
recollections of a very gallant gentleman.

In this connection let me add that no animals could have had more
considerate and often self-sacrificing treatment than these ponies of
ours. Granted that they must be used at all (and I do not mean to enter
into that question) they were fed, trained, and even clothed as friends
and companions rather than as beasts of burden. They were never hit, a
condition to which they were clearly unaccustomed. They lived far better
than they had before, and all this was done for them in spite of the
conditions under which we ourselves lived. We became very fond of our
beasts but we could not be blind to their faults. The mind of a horse is
a very limited concern, relying almost entirely upon memory. He rivals
our politicians in that he has little real intellect. Consequently, when
the pony was faced with conditions different from those to which he was
accustomed, he showed but little adaptability; and when you add to this
frozen harness and rugs, with all their straps and buckles and lashings,
an incredible facility for eating anything within reach including his own
tethering ropes and the headstalls, fringes and whatnots of his
companions, together with our own scanty provisions and a general wish to
do anything except the job of the moment, it must be admitted that the
pony leader's lot was full of occasions for bad temper. Nevertheless
leaders and ponies were on the best of terms (excepting always
Christopher), which is really not surprising when you come to think that
most of the leaders were sailors whose love of animals is profound.

A lean-to roof was built against the northern side of the hut, and the
ends and open side were boarded up. This building when buttressed by the
bricks of coal which formed our fuel, and drifted up with snow by the
blizzards, formed an extremely sheltered and even warm stable. The ponies
stood in stalls with their heads towards the hut and divided from it by a
corridor; the bars which kept them in carried also their food boxes. They
lay down very little, the ground was too cold, and Oates was of opinion
that litter would not have benefited them if we had had space in the ship
to bring it. The floor of their stall was formed of the gravel on which
the hut was built. On any future occasion it might be worth consideration
whether a flooring of wood might add to their comfort. As you walked down
this narrow passage you passed a line of heads, many of which would have
a nip at you in the semi-darkness, and at the far end Oates had rigged up
for himself a blubber stove, more elaborate than the one we had made
with the odds and ends at Hut Point, but in principle the same, in that
the fids of sealskin with the blubber attached to them were placed on a
grid, and the heat generated caused them to drop their oil on to ashes
below which formed the fire. This fire not only warmed the stable, but
melted the snow to water the ponies and heated their bran mashes. I do
not wonder that this warm companionable home appealed to their minds when
they were exercising in the cold, dark, windy sea-ice: they were always
trying to get rid of their leader, and if successful generally went
straight back to the hut. Here they would dodge their pursuers until such
time as they were sick of the game, when they quietly walked into the
stable of their own accord to be welcomed with triumphant squeals and
kickings by their companions.

I have already spoken of their exercise. Their ration during the winter
was as follows:

8 A.M. Chaff.

12 NOON. Snow. Chaff and oats or oil-cake alternate days.

5 P.M. Snow. Hot bran mash with oil-cake, or boiled oats and chaff;
finally a small quantity of hay.

In the spring they were got into condition on hard food all cold, and by
a carefully increased scale of exercise during the latter part of which
they drew sledges with very light loads.

Unfortunately I have no record as to what changes of feeding stuffs Oates
would have made if it had been possible. Certainly we should not have
brought the bales of compressed fodder, which as I have already
explained,[144] was theoretically green wheat cut young, but practically
no manner of use as a food, though of some use perhaps as bulk. Probably
he would have used hay for this purpose at Winter Quarters had our stock
of it not been very limited, for hay takes up too much room on a ship
when every square inch of stowage space is of value. The original weights
of fodder with which we left New Zealand were: compressed chaff, 30
tons; hay, 5 tons; oil-cake, 5-6 tons; bran, 4-5 tons; and two kinds of
oats, of which the white was better than the black. We wanted more bran
than we had.[145] This does not exhaust our list of feeding stuffs, for
one of our ponies called Snippets would eat blubber, and so far as I know
it agreed with him.

We left New Zealand with nineteen ponies, seventeen of which were
destined for the Main Party and two for the help of Campbell in the
exploration of King Edward VII.'s Land. Two of these died in the big gale
at sea, and we landed fifteen ponies at Cape Evans in January. Of these
we lost six on the Depot Journey, while Hackenschmidt, who was a vicious
beast, sickened and wasted away in our absence, for no particular reason
that we could discover, until there was nothing to do but shoot him. Thus
eight only out of the original seventeen Main Party ponies which started
from New Zealand were left by the beginning of the winter.

I have told[146] how, during our absence on the Depot Journey, the ship
had tried to land Campbell with his two ponies on King Edward VII.'s
Land, but had been prevented from reaching it by pack ice. Coasting back
in search of a landing place they found Amundsen in the Bay of Whales.
Under the circumstances Campbell decided not to land his party there but
to try and land on the north coast of South Victoria Land, in which he
was finally successful. In the interval the ship returned to Cape Evans
with the news, and since he was of opinion that his animals would be
useless to him in that region he took the opportunity to swim the two
ponies ashore, a distance of half a mile, for the ship could get no
nearer and the sea-ice had gone. Thus we started the winter with
Campbell's two ponies (Jehu and Chinaman), two ponies which had survived
the Depot Journey (Nobby and James Pigg), and six ponies which had been
left at Cape Evans (Snatcher, Snippets, Bones, Victor, Michael and
Christopher) a total of ten.

Of these ten Christopher was the only real devil with vice, but he was a
strong pony, and it was clear that he would be useful if he could be
managed. Bones, Snatcher, Victor and Snippets were all useful ponies.
Michael was a highly-strung nice beast, but his value was doubtful;
Chinaman was more doubtful still, and it was questionable sometimes
whether Jehu would be able to pull anything at all. This leaves Nobby and
Jimmy Pigg, both of which were with us on the Depot Journey. Nobby was
the best of the two; he was the only survivor from the sea-ice disaster,
and I am not sure that his rescue did not save the situation with regard
to the Pole. Jimmy Pigg was wending his way slowly back from Corner Camp
at this time and so was also saved. He was a weak pony but did extremely
well on the Polar Journey. It may be coincidence that these two ponies,
the only ponies which had gained previous sledging experience, did better
according to their strength than any of the others, but I am inclined to
believe that their familiarity with the conditions on the Barrier was of
great value to them, doing away with much useless worry and exhaustion.

And so it will be understood with what feelings of anxiety any cases of
injury or illness to our ponies were regarded. The cases of injury were
few and of small importance, thanks to the care with which they were
exercised in the dark on ice which was by no means free from
inequalities. Let me explain in passing that this ice is almost always
covered by at least a thin layer of drifted snow and for the most part is
not slippery. Every now and then there would be a great banging and
crashing heard through the walls of the hut in the middle of the night.
The watchman would run out, Oates put on his boots, Scott be audibly
uneasy. It was generally Bones or Chinaman kicking their stalls, perhaps
to keep themselves warm, but by the time the watchman had reached the
stable he would be met by a line of sleepy faces blinking at him in the
light of the electric torch, each saying plainly that he could not
possibly have been responsible for a breach of the peace!

But antics might easily lead to accidents, and more than once a pony was
found twisted up in some way in his stall, or even to have fallen to the
ground. Their heads were tied on either side to the stanchions of the
stall, and so if they tried to lie down complications might arise. More
alarming was the one serious case of illness, preceded by a slighter case
of a similar nature in another pony. Jimmy Pigg had a slight attack of
colic in the middle of June, but he was feeding all right again during
the evening of the same day. It was at noon, July 14, that Bones went off
his feed. This was followed by spasms of acute pain. "Every now and again
he attempted to lie down, and Oates eventually thought it was wiser to
allow him to do so. Once down, his head gradually drooped until he lay at
length, every now and then twitching very horribly with the pain, and
from time to time raising his head and even scrambling to his legs when
it grew intense. I don't think I ever realized before how pathetic a
horse could be under such conditions; no sound escapes him, his misery
can only be indicated by those distressing spasms and by dumb movement of
the head with a patient expression always suggestive of appeal."[147]
Towards midnight it seemed that we were to lose him, and, apart from
other considerations, we knew that unless we could keep all the surviving
animals alive the risks of failure in the coming journey were much
increased.

"It was shortly after midnight when I [Scott] was told that the animal
seemed a little easier. At 2.30 I was again in the stable and found the
improvement had been maintained; the horse still lay on its side with
outstretched head, but the spasms had ceased, its eye looked less
distressed, and its ears pricked to occasional noises. As I stood looking
it suddenly raised its head and rose without effort to its legs; then in
a moment, as though some bad dream had passed, it began to nose at some
hay and at its neighbour. Within three minutes it had drunk a bucket of
water and had started to feed."[148]

The immediate cause of the trouble was indicated by "a small ball of
semi-fermented hay covered with mucus and containing tape-worms; so far
not very serious, but unfortunately attached to this mass was a strip of
the lining of the intestine."[149]

The recovery of Bones was uninterrupted. Two day later another pony went
off his feed and lay down, but was soon well again.

Considerable speculation as to the original cause of this illness never
found a satisfactory answer. Some traced it to a want of ventilation, and
it is necessary to say that both the ponies who were ill stood next to
the blubber stove; at any rate a big ventilator was fitted and more fresh
air let in. Others traced it to the want of water, supposing that the
animals would not eat as much snow as they would have drunk water; the
easy remedy for this was to give them water instead of snow. We also gave
them more salt than they had had before. Whatever the cause may have been
we had no more of this colic, and the improvement in their condition
until we started sledging was uninterrupted.

All the ponies were treated for worms; it was also found that they had
lice, which were eradicated after some time and difficulty by a wash of
tobacco and water. I know that Oates wished that he had clipped the
ponies at the beginning of the winter, believing that they would have
grown far better coats if this had been done. He also would have wished
for a loose box for each pony.

No account of the ponies would be complete without mention of our Russian
pony boy, Anton. He was small in height, but he was exceedingly strong
and had a chest measurement of 40 inches.

[Illustration: EREBUS AND LANDS END]

[Illustration: EREBUS BEHIND GREAT RAZORBACK]

I believe both Anton and Dimitri, the Russian dog driver, were brought
originally to look after the ponies and dogs on their way from Siberia to
New Zealand. But they proved such good fellows and so useful that we were
very glad to take them on the strength of the landing party. I fear that
Anton, at any rate, did not realize what he was in for. When we arrived
at Cape Crozier in the ship on our voyage south, and he saw the two great
peaks of Ross Island in front and the Barrier Cliff disappearing in an
unbroken wall below the eastern horizon, he imagined that he reached
the South Pole, and was suitably elated. When the darkness of the winter
closed down upon us, this apparently unnatural order of things so preyed
upon his superstitious mind that he became seriously alarmed. Where the
sea-ice joined the land in front of the hut was of course a working
crack, caused by the rise and fall of the tide. Sometimes the sea-water
found its way up, and Anton was convinced that the weird phosphorescent
lights which danced up out of the sea were devils. In propitiation we
found that he had sacrificed to them his most cherished luxury, his
scanty allowance of cigarettes, which he had literally cast upon the
waters in the darkness. It was natural that his thoughts should turn to
the comforts of his Siberian home, and the one-legged wife whom he was
going to marry there, and when it became clear that a another year would
be spent in the South his mind was troubled. And so he went to Oates and
asked him, "If I go away at the end of this year, will Captain Scott
disinherit me?" In order to try and express his idea, for he knew little
English, he had some days before been asking "what we called it when a
father died and left his son nothing." Poor Anton!

He looked long and anxiously for the ship, and with his kit-bag on his
shoulder was amongst the first to trek across the ice to meet her. Having
asked for and obtained a job of work there was no happier man on board:
he never left her until she reached New Zealand. Nevertheless he was
always cheerful, always working, and a most useful addition to our small
community.

It is still usual to talk of people living in complete married happiness
when we really mean, so Mr. Bernard Shaw tells me, that they confine
their quarrels to Thursday nights. If then I say that we lived this life
for nearly three years, from the day when we left England until the day
we returned to New Zealand, without any friction of any kind, I shall be
supposed to be making a formal statement of somewhat limited truth. May I
say that there is really no formality about it, and nothing but the
truth. To be absolutely accurate I must admit to having seen a man in a
very 'prickly' state on one occasion. That was all. It didn't last and
may have been well justified for aught I know: I have forgotten what it
was all about. Why we should have been more fortunate than polar
travellers in general it is hard to say, but undoubtedly a very powerful
reason was that we had no idle hours: there was no time to quarrel.

Before we went South people were always saying, "You will get fed up with
one another. What will you do all the dark winter?" As a matter of fact
the difficulty was to get through with the work. Often after working all
through a long night-watch officers carried on as a matter of course
through the following day in order to clear off arrears. There was little
reading or general relaxation during the day: certainly not before
supper, if at all. And while no fixed hours for work were laid down, the
custom was general that all hours between breakfast and supper should be
so used.

Our small company was desperately keen to obtain results. The youngest
and most cynical pessimist must have had cause for wonder to see a body
of healthy and not unintellectual men striving thus single-mindedly to
add their small quota of scientific and geographical knowledge to the sum
total of the world--with no immediate prospect of its practical utility.
Laymen and scientists alike were determined to attain the objects to gain
which they had set forth.

And I believe that in a vague intangible way there was an ideal in front
of and behind this work. It is really not desirable for men who do not
believe that knowledge is of value for its own sake to take up this kind
of life. The question constantly put to us in civilization was and still
is: "What is the use? Is there gold? or Is there coal?" The commercial
spirit of the present day can see no good in pure science: the English
manufacturer is not interested in research which will not give him a
financial return within one year: the city man sees in it only so much
energy wasted on unproductive work: truly they are bound to the wheel of
conventional life.

Now unless a man believes that such a view is wrong he has no business to
be 'down South.' Our magnetic and meteorological work may, I suppose,
have a fairly immediate bearing upon commerce and shipping: otherwise I
cannot imagine any branch of our labours which will do more at present
than swell the central pool of unapplied knowledge. The members of this
expedition believed that it was worth while to discover new land and new
life, to reach the Southern Pole of the earth, to make elaborate
meteorological and magnetic observations and extended geological surveys
with all the other branches of research for which we were equipped. They
were prepared to suffer great hardship; and some of them died for their
beliefs. Without such ideals the spirit which certainly existed in our
small community would have been impossible.

But if the reasons for this happy state of our domestic life were due
largely to the adaptability and keenness of the members of our small
community, I doubt whether the frictions which have caused other
expeditions to be less comfortable than they might have been, would have
been avoided in our case, had it not been for the qualities in some of
our men which set a fashion of hard work without any thought of personal
gain.

With all its troubles it is a good life. We came back from the Barrier,
telling one another we loathed the place and nothing on earth should make
us return. But now the Barrier comes back to us, with its clean, open
life, and the smell of the cooker, and its soft sound sleep. So much of
the trouble of this world is caused by memories, for we only remember
half.

We have forgotten--or nearly forgotten--how the loss of a biscuit crumb
left a sense of injury which lasted for a week; how the greatest friends
were so much on one another's nerves that they did not speak for days for
fear of quarrelling; how angry we felt when the cook ran short on the
weekly bag; how sick we were after the first meals when we could eat as
much as we liked; how anxious we were when a man fell ill many hundreds
of miles from home, and we had a fortnight of thick weather and had to
find our depots or starve. We remember the cry of _Camp Ho!_ which
preceded the cup of tea which gave us five more miles that evening; the
good fellowship which completed our supper after safely crossing a bad
patch of crevasses; the square inch of plum pudding which celebrated our
Christmas Day; the chanties we sang all over the Barrier as we marched
our ponies along.

We travelled for Science. Those three small embryos from Cape Crozier,
that weight of fossils from Buckley Island, and that mass of material,
less spectacular, but gathered just as carefully hour by hour in wind and
drift, darkness and cold, were striven for in order that the world may
have a little more knowledge, that it may build on what it knows instead
of on what it thinks.

Some of our men were ambitious: some wanted money, others a name; some a
help up the scientific ladder, others an F.R.S. Why not? But we had men
who did not care a rap for money or fame. I do not believe it mattered to
Wilson when he found that Amundsen had reached the Pole a few days before
him--not much. Pennell would have been very bored if you had given him a
knighthood. Lillie, Bowers, Priestley, Debenham, Atkinson and many others
were much the same.

But there is no love lost between the class of men who go out and do such
work and the authorities at home who deal with their collections. I
remember a conversation in the hut during the last bad winter. Men were
arguing fiercely that professionally they lost a lot by being down South,
that they fell behindhand in current work, got out of the running and so
forth. There is a lot in that. And then the talk went on to the
publication of results, and the way in which they would wish them done. A
said he wasn't going to hand over his work to be mucked up by such and
such a body at home; B said he wasn't going to have his buried in museum
book-shelves never to be seen again; C said he would jolly well publish
his own results in the scientific journals. And the ears of the armchair
scientists who might deal with our hard-won specimens and observations
should have been warm that night.

At the time I felt a little indignant. It seemed to me that these men
ought to think themselves lucky to be down South at all: there were
thousands who would have like to take their place. But now I understand
quite a lot more than I did then. Science is a big thing if you can
travel a Winter Journey in her cause and not regret it. I am not sure she
is not bigger still if you can have dealings with scientists and continue
to follow in her path.

FOOTNOTES:

[134] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. p. 604.

[135] _Scott's Last Expedition_, vol. i. pp. 599, 602, 607.