there, but for the present we had to relay, that is, take one
load forward and come back for another.

On the 26th we sledged back to the ship for our last load, and said
good-bye on the sea-ice to those men with whom we had already worked so
long, to Campbell and his five companions who were to suffer so much, to
cheery Pennell and his ship's company.

Before we left, Scott thanked Pennell and his men "for their splendid
work. They have behaved like bricks, and a finer lot of men never sailed
in a ship.... It was a little sad to say farewell to all these good
fellows and Campbell and his men. I do most heartily trust that all will
be successful in their ventures, for indeed their unselfishness and their
generous high spirit deserve reward. God bless them."

Four of that Depot party were never to see these men again, and Pennell,
Commander of the Queen Mary, went down with his ship in the battle of
Jutland.

Two days later, January 28, we sledged our first loads on to the Barrier.
By that day we had done nearly ninety miles of relay work, first from the
ship at Glacier Tongue to our camp off Hut Point, and then onwards. Those
first days of sledging were wonderful! What memories they must have
brought to Scott and Wilson when to us, who had never seen them before,
these much-discussed landmarks were almost like old friends. As we made
our way over the frozen sea every seal-hole was of interest, and every
type of wind-swept snow a novelty. The peak of Terror opened out behind
the crater of Erebus, and we walked under Castle Rock and Danger Slope
until, rounding the promontory, we saw the little jagged Hut Point, and
on it the cross placed there to Vince's memory, all unchanged. There was
the old Discovery hut and the Bay in which the Discovery lay, and from
which she was almost miraculously freed at the last moment, only to be
flung upon the shoal which runs out from the Point, where some tins of
the old Discovery days lie on the bottom still and glint in the evening
sun. And round about the Bay were the Heights of which we had read,
Observation Hill, and Crater Hill separated from it by The Gap--through
which the wind was streaming; of course it was, for this must be the
famous Hut Point wind.

A few hundred more blizzards had swept over it since those days, but it
was all just the same, even to Ferrar's little stakes placed across the
glacierets to mark their movement, more, even to the footsteps still
plainly vis