Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/481

more towards the return of light and usefulness, and preparations were started for the future sledging season. After dinner I called together the members and told them what I proposed to do in the coming season, stating the reasons and asking for their criticism. Two alternatives lay before us. One was to go south and try to discover the fate of Captain Scott's party. I thought it most likely that they had been lost in a crevasse on the Beardmore Glacier. Whether their bodies could be found or not, it was highly desirable to go even as far as the Upper Glacier Depôt, nearly 600 miles from the base, in the hope of finding a note left in some depôt which could tell whether they had fulfilled their task or turned back before reaching the Pole. On general grounds it was of great importance not to leave the record of the Expedition incomplete, with one of its most striking chapters a blank.

The other alternative was to go west and north to relieve Campbell and his party, always supposing they had survived the winter. If they had come through the winter, every day of advancing summer would improve their chances of living on in Terra Nova Bay. At the same time there was good prospect of their being ultimately relieved by the ship, if indeed she had not taken them off in the autumn. As for ourselves, it seemed most improbable that we could journey up the coast owing to the abnormal state of the ice. Instead of being frozen for the winter, the whole Sound to the north and west of Inaccessible Island was open water during July; the ice was driven out by the exceptionally strong and frequent winds, and there was little chance of a firm road forming