an hauled me out and
Crean wished me many happy returns of the day, and of course I thanked
him politely and the others laughed, but all were pleased I was not hurt
bar a bit of a shake. It was funny although they called to the other team
to stop they did not hear, but went trudging on and did not know until
they looked round just in time to see me arrive on top again. They then
waited for us to come up with them. The Captain asked if I was all right
and could go on again, which I could honestly say 'Yes' to, and at night
when we stopped for dinner I felt I could do two dinners in. Anyhow we
had a pretty good tuck-in. Dinner consisted of pemmican, biscuits,
chocolate eclair, pony meat, plum pudding and crystallized ginger and
four caramels each. We none of us could hardly move."[247]]

We had done over eight miles at lunch. I had managed to scrape together
from the Barrier rations enough extra food to allow us a stick of
chocolate each for lunch, with two spoonfuls of raisins each in our tea.
In the afternoon we got clear of crevasses pretty soon, but towards the
end of the afternoon Captain Scott got fairly wound up and went on and
on. The breeze died down and my breath kept fogging my glasses, and our
windproofs got oppressively warm and altogether things were pretty
rotten. At last he stopped and we found we had done 143/4 miles. He said,
"What about fifteen miles for Christmas Day?" so we gladly went
on--anything definite is better than indefinite trudging.

We had a great feed which I had kept hidden and out of the official
weights since our departure from Winter Quarters. It consisted of a good
fat hoosh with pony meat and ground biscuit; a chocolate hoosh made of
water, cocoa, sugar, biscuit, raisins, and thickened with a spoonful of
arrowroot. (This is the most satisfying stuff imaginable.) Then came 21/2
square inches of plum-duff each, and a good mug of cocoa washed down the
whole. In addition to this we had four caramels each and four squares of
crystallized ginger. I positively could not eat all mine, and turned in
feeling as if I had made a beast of myself. I wrote up my journal--in
fact I should have liked somebody to put me to bed.

December 26. We have seen many new ranges of mountains extending to the
S.E. of the Dominion Range. They are very distant, however, and must
evidently be the top of those bounding the Barrier. They could only be
seen from the tops of the ridges as waves up which we are contin