Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/69

348 gleam of sunshine, which soon gave place to snow and gloom, but we started to make experiments in haulage. Four men on ski managed to move a sledge with four others sitting upon it. Nobby was led out, but sank to his belly. As for the drifts I saw Oates standing behind one, and only his head appeared, and this was all loose snow.

"We are all sitting round now after some tea—it is much better than getting into the bags. I can hardly think that the ponies can pull on, but Titus thinks they can pull to-morrow; all the food is finished, and what they have had to-day was only what they would not eat out of their last feed yesterday. It is a terrible end—driven to death on no more food, to be then cut up, poor devils. I have swopped the Little Minister with Silas Wright for Dante's Inferno!" The steady patter of the falling snow upon the tents was depressing as we turned in, but the temperature was below freezing.

The next morning (Saturday, December 9) we turned out to a cloudy snowy day at 5.30 By 8.30 we had hauled the sledges some way out of the camp and started to lead out the ponies. "The horses could hardly move, sank up to their bellies, and finally lay down. They had to be driven, lashed on. It was a grim business."

My impressions of that day are of groping our way, for Bowers and I were pulling a light sledge ahead to make the track, through a vague white wall. First a confused crowd of men behind us gathered round the leading pony sledge, pushing it forward, the poor beast barely able to struggle out of the holes it made as it plunged forward. The others were induced to follow, and after a start had been made the regular man-hauling party went back to fetch their load. There was not one man there who would willingly have caused pain to a living thing. But what else was to be done—we could not leave our pony depôt in that bog. Hour after hour we plugged on: and we dare not halt for lunch, we knew we could never start again. After crossing many waves huge pressure ridges suddenly