Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/809

1912] very annoying thing has happened. Bowers' watch has suddenly dropped 26 minutes; it may have stopped from being frozen outside his pocket, or he may have inadvertently touched the hands. Any way it makes one more chary of leaving stores on this great plain, especially as the blizzard tended to drift up our tracks. We could only just see the back track when we started, but the light was extremely poor.

Wednesday, January 10.—Camp 62. T. −11°. Last depôt 88° 29′ S.; 159° 33′ E.; Var. 180°. Terrible hard march in the morning; only covered 5·1 miles (geo.). Decided to leave depôt at lunch camp. Built cairn and left one week's food together with sundry articles of clothing. We are down as close as we can go in the latter. We go forward with eighteen days' food. Yesterday I should have said certain to see us through, but now the surface is beyond words, and if it continues we shall have the greatest difficulty to keep our march long enough. The surface is quite covered with sandy snow, and when the sun shines it is terrible. During the early part of the afternoon it was overcast, and we started our lightened sledge with a good swing, but during the last two hours the sun cast shadows again, and the work was distressingly hard. We have covered only 10·8 miles (geo.).

Only 85 miles (geog.) from the Pole, but it's going to be a stiff pull both ways apparently; still we do make progress, which is something. To-night the sky is overcast, the temperature (−11°) much higher than I anticipated; it is very difficult to imagine what is happening to the