Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/276

Rh they left the Pole (January 19) Wilson wrote an account of it. "We had a splendid wind right behind us most of the afternoon and went well until about 6 when the sun came out and we had an awful grind until 7.30 when we camped. The sun comes out on sandy drifts, all on the move in the wind, and temp. −20°, and gives us an absolutely awful surface with no glide at all for ski or sledge, and just like fine sand. The weather all day has been more or less overcast with white broken alto-stratus, and for 3 degrees above the horizon there is a grey belt looking like a blizzard of drift, but this in reality is caused by a constant fall of minute snow crystals, very minute. Sometimes instead of crystal plates the fall is of minute agglomerate spicules like tiny sea-urchins. The plates glitter in the sun as though of some size, but you can only just see them as pin-points on your burberry. So the spicule collections are only just visible. Our hands are never warm enough in camp to do any neat work now. The weather is always uncomfortably cold and windy, about −23°, but after lunch to-day I got a bit of drawing done."

All the joy had gone from their sledging. They were hungry, they were cold, the pulling was heavy, and two of them were not fit. As long ago as January 14 Scott wrote that Oates was feeling the cold and fatigue more than the others and again he refers to the matter on January 20. On January 19 Wilson wrote: "We get our hairy faces and mouths dreadfully iced up on the march, and often one's hands very cold indeed holding ski-sticks. Evans, who cut his knuckle some days ago at the last depôt, has a lot of pus in it to-night." January 20: "Evans has got 4 or 5 of his finger-tips badly blistered by the cold. Titus also his nose and cheeks—al[so] Evans and Bowers." January 28; "Evans has a number of badly blistered finger-ends which he got at the Pole. Titus' big toe is turning blue-black." January 31: "Evans' finger-nails all coming off, very raw and sore." February 4: "Evans is feeling the cold a lot, always getting frost-bitten. Titus' toes are blackening, and his nose and cheeks are dead yellow.