short-sighted indeed.

Everybody exercised generously, whether by himself on ski, leading a
pony, digging ice for the cook or ice to melt for the ponies' drinking
water, or even with a whole crowd playing rather dangerous football on
the sea ice north of Cape Evans.

When the real winter came I used to walk, after winding the chronometers,
until breakfast time to begin with. This gave me half an hour, then again
before lunch I would put on ski and go for a run with anybody who had not
a pony to exercise. The visibility was frequently limited, particularly
on overcast days; one would glide along over the sea ice, which was in
places wind-swept and in others covered with snow. Nothing in sight but
the gray-white shadow underfoot and the blue-black sky above, a streak or
band just a mere smudge of daylight in the north, but this would be
sufficient to give one direction to go out on. Then slowly, dim,
spectre-like shapes would appear which would gradually sort themselves
out into two lots, black and white--these were Titus's ponies--the white
shapes, the black were the men leading them. On they came, seemingly at a
great pace, and one heard a crunching noise as the hoofs of the ponies
trod down the snow crust, but one could not hear the footfalls of the
men. One exchanged a "Hallo" with the leading man and passed on until a
much bigger white shape loomed up in the obscurity of the noon-twilight,
the going underfoot changed and skis fetched up against a great lump of
ice which was scarcely discernible in the confusing darkness, and one
realised that what little light there was to the northward had been
blotted out by one of the big grounded icebergs. Directly one realised
which berg it was a new course would be shaped, say to the end of the
Barne Glacier; the cliffs of this reached, one proceeded homeward a
league to the hut. This could not be missed on the darkest day if the