Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/30

Tuesday, June 27, 1911.—Leaving the hut at Cape Evans shortly before 11 a.m., Bowers, Cherry-Garrard and I started for our first march, accompanied by Simpson, Meares, Griffith Taylor, Nelson and Gran, who all helped us to drag our two sledges, and by a number of others who came to see us round the Cape.

We made for the western extremity of Big Razorback Island, and halted when it had just closed and covered the Little Razorback. We were then not 100 yards from the actual end of the rock and the sledgemeter read 3 miles 700 yards. Nelson and Taylor left us here and we continued with the other three.

We could now just distinguish the rock patches of Castle Rock and Harbour Heights and we made in a bit to pass as close as possible to the end of Glacier Tongue, where pressure lines were said to be less numerous in the sea ice than farther out. It was so dark, however, that we never saw the end of this Glacier Tongue, and we only knew we had passed it when the lower two-thirds of the Turk's Head Cliffs were suddenly cut off.

We then ran into some very difficult hummocky sea ice with steep-cut drifts, and our rear sledge capsized. It was too dark to avoid them, so Meares, Simpson and Gran remained with us and helped us until we had cleared them. We were then about three-quarters of a mile beyond Glacier Tongue and the sledgemeter read 5 m. 250 yds.

The wind, light southerly airs alternating with calm all the forenoon, now began to blow with some force from the east, and the sky became more and more overcast in the south [a half blizzard, in fact]; so we per-