Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/94

Tuesday, July 25, 1911.—There was a stiff cold breeze of force 4 and temp. −15·3° which came down our slope from S.S.W., with thick weather and heavy clouds moving up from the Barrier in the south. We quickly finished all our final arrangements and got away down into the gut by the pressure ridges, where we found ourselves pulling against a gale rapidly freshening from the S.W. [My job, writes Cherry-Garrard, was to balance the sledge behind: I was so utterly done I don't believe I could have pulled effectively. Birdie was much the strongest of us. The strain and want of sleep was getting me in the neck, and Bill looked very bad.]

This wind became so strong after we had gone a mile that we camped, much against our inclinations, in amongst ice-hard, wind-swept sastrugi [our hands going one after the other], and the gale continued and freshened to force 9 and lasted all night. Bowers here determined that the tent should not go off alone, and arranged a line by which he fastened the cap of the tent to himself as he lay in his bag. The temp. during the day was from −15·3° to −17°, and the whole sky was overcast.

Bowers to-day turned his bag to hair outside. Cherry had a sound sleep in his bag, which he badly wanted.

[I, writes C.-G., was feeling as if I should crack, and accepted Birdie's eiderdown, which he had not used and had for many days been asking me to use. It was wonderfully self-sacrificing of him, more than I can write. I felt a brute to take it, but I was getting useless, unless I got some sleep, which my big bag would not allow. The day we got down to the Emperors I felt so done that I