clusion that the seamen with their special knowledge,
would be needed: to rebuild the sledge, I suppose. Wilson told me it was
a toss-up whether Titus or I should go on: that being so I think Titus
will help him more than I can. I said all I could think of--he seemed so
cut up about it, saying 'I think, somehow, it is specially hard on you.'
I said I hoped I had not disappointed him, and he caught hold of me and
said 'No--no--No,' so if that is the case all is well. He told me that at
the bottom of the glacier he was hardly expecting to go on himself: I
don't know what the trouble is, but his foot is troubling him, and also,
I think, indigestion."[242]

Scott just says in his diary, "I dreaded this necessity of
choosing--nothing could be more heartrending." And then he goes on to sum
up the situation, "I calculated our programme to start from 85 deg. 10' with
12 units of food and eight men. We ought to be in this position to-morrow
night, less one day's food. After all our harassing trouble one cannot
but be satisfied with such a prospect."[243]

December 21. Upper Glacier Depot. "Started off with a nippy S.Wly. wind
in our faces, but bright sunshine. One's nose and lips being chapped and
much skinned with alternate heat and cold, a breeze in the face is
absolute agony until you warm up. This does not take long, however, when
pulling a sledge, so after the first quarter of an hour more or less one
is comfortable unless the wind is very strong.

"We made towards the only place where it seemed possible to cross the
mass of pressure ice caused by the junction of the plateau with the
glacier, and congested between the nunatak [Buckley Island] and the
Dominion Range. Scott had considered at one time going up to westward of
the nunatak, but this appeared more chaotic than the other side. We made
for a slope close to the end of the island or nunatak, where Shackleton
must have got up also; it is obviously the only place when you look at it
from a commanding rise. We did not go quite so close to the land as
Shackleton did, and therefore, as had been the case with us all the way
up the glacier, found less difficulties than he met with. Scott is quite
wonderful in his selections of route, as we have escaped excessive
dangers and difficulties all along. In this case we had fairly good
going, but got into a perfect mass of crevasses into which we all
continually fell; mostly one foot, but often two, and occasionally we
went down