ur 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.'

_Monday, December_ 11.--Camp 33. A very good day from one point of
view, very bad from another. We started straight out over the glacier
and passed through a good deal of disturbance. We pulled on ski and the
dogs followed. I cautioned the drivers to keep close to their sledges
and we must have passed over a good many crevasses undiscovered by us,
thanks to ski, and by the dogs owing to the soft snow. In one only
Seaman Evans dropped a leg, ski and all. We built our depot [34]
before starting, made it very conspicuous, and left a good deal of
gear there. The old man-hauling party made heavy weather at first,
but when relieved of a little weight and having cleaned their runners
and re-adjusted their load they came on in fine style, and, passing
us, took the lead. Starting about 11, by 3 o'clock we were clear of
the pressure, and I camped the dogs, discharged our loads, and we put
them on our sledges. 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 in
it brought up altogether. The latter were very trying and tiring. But
suddenly the surface grew more uniform and we more accustomed to the
game, for after a long stop to let the other parties come up, I started
at 6 and ran on till 7, pulling easily without a halt at the rate of
about 2 miles an hour. I was very jubilant; all difficulties seemed
to be vanishing; but unfortunately our history was not repeated with
the other parties. Bowers came up about half an hour after us. They
also had done well at the last, and I'm pretty sure they will get
on all right. Keohane is the only weak spot, and he only, I think,
because blind (temporarily). But Evans' party didn't get up till
10. They started quite well, but got into difficulties, did just the
wrong thing by straining again and again, and so, tiring themselves,
went from bad to