Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/81

354 moving for short spells of a few hundred yards, the whole concern sinking so deeply into the soft snow as to form a snow-plough. The starting was worse than pulling as it required from ten to fifteen desperate jerks on the harness to move the sledge at all." Many others were also snow-blind, caused partly by the strain of the last march of the ponies, partly by not having realized that now that we were day-marching the sun was more powerful and more precautions should be taken. The cocaine and zinc sulphate tablets which we had were excellent, but we also found that our tea leaves, which had been boiled twice and would otherwise have been thrown away, relieved the pain if tied into some cotton and kept pressed against the eyes. The tannic acid in the tea acted as an astringent. A snow-blind man can see practically nothing anyhow and so he is not much worse off if a handkerchief is tied over his eyes.

"Beardmore Glacier. Just a tiny note to be taken back by the dogs. Things are not so rosy as they might be, but we keep our spirits up and say the luck must turn. This is only to tell you that I find I can keep up with the rest as well as of old."

Then for the first time we were left with our full loads of 800 lbs. a sledge. Even Bowers asked Scott whether he was going to try it without relaying. That night Scott's diary runs:

"It was a very anxious business when we started after lunch, about 4.30. Could we pull our full loads or not? My own party got away first, and, to my joy, I found we could make fairly good headway. Every now and again the sledge sank in a soft patch, which brought us up, but we learned to treat such occasions with patience. We got sideways to the sledge and hauled it out, Evans (P.O.) getting out of his ski to get better purchase. The great thing is to keep the sledge moving, and for an hour or more there were dozens of critical moments when it all but stopped, and not a few when it brought up altogether. The latter were very trying and tiring." Altogether it was an encouraging day and we reckoned we had made