Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/511

ingly loud and startling, if unexpected. The mules soon settled down to the roars and became accustomed to them, but it was always a source of great interest to the dogs. As soon as one of these subsidences with its roar came to them they started off at full gallop, expecting at any moment some animal to appear. They had been accustomed in Siberia to dig out animals lying up snowed in. These subsidences were a great help and kept the dogs interested, and they ran very well.

On the night of the 10th and morning of the 11th we made One Ton Depôt, coming up five and three-quarters miles to it. I decided to give men and animals a half-day's rest here. It was a beautiful sunny and bright day but with some wind. Here we found the stores which had been left by Demetri and Cherry-Garrard. One of the tins of paraffin on top of the cairns had leaked and spoilt some of the stores placed at the foot of the camp. There was no hole of any kind in this tin.

Our progress up to this point had been made in a day and a half less time than it had taken us on the previous year, and that was with the mules drawing full loads for the whole of the time. There was no doubt that our surface had been infinitely better than in the previous season. Everything was favourable and the health of men and animals was splendid.

On the night of the 11th and morning of the 12th, after we had marched eleven miles due south of One Ton, we found the tent. It was an object partially snowed up and looking like a cairn. Before it were the ski sticks and in front of them a bamboo which probably