hardly expecting to go on himself: I don't know what the trouble is, but his foot is troubling him, and also, I think, indigestion."[1]
Scott just says in his diary, "I dreaded this necessity of choosing—nothing could be more heartrending." And then he goes on to sum up the situation, "I calculated our programme to start from 85° 10′ with 12 units of food and eight men. We ought to be in this position to-morrow night, less one day's food. After all our harassing trouble one cannot but be satisfied with such a prospect."[2]
December 21. Upper Glacier Depôt. "Started off with a nippy S.Wly. wind in our faces, but bright sunshine. One's nose and lips being chapped and much skinned with alternate heat and cold, a breeze in the face is absolute agony until you warm up. This does not take long, however, when pulling a sledge, so after the first quarter of an hour more or less one is comfortable unless the wind is very strong.
"We made towards the only place where it seemed possible to cross the mass of pressure ice caused by the junction of the plateau with the glacier, and congested between the nunatak [Buckley Island] and the Dominion Range. Scott had considered at one time going up to westward of the nunatak, but this appeared more chaotic than the other side. We made for a slope close to the end of the island or nunatak, where Shackleton must have got up also; it is obviously the only place when you look at it from a commanding rise. We did not go quite so close to the land as Shackleton did, and therefore, as had been the case with us all the way up the glacier, found less difficulties than he met with. Scott is quite wonderful in his selections of route, as we have escaped excessive dangers and difficulties all along. In this case we had fairly good going, but got into a perfect mass of crevasses into which we all continually fell; mostly one foot, but often two, and occasionally we went down altogether, some to the length of their harness to be hauled out with the Alpine rope. Most of them could be seen by the strip of snow on
