Our homeward march continued for day after day with no very exciting
incidents. We met no more crevasses that were more than a foot or so
wide, and we worked our way down on to the Great Ice Barrier with
comparatively easy marches, although the distances we covered were
surprising to us all--seventeen miles a day we averaged.

On the 30th January Lashly and I had been fourteen weeks out, and we had
exhausted practically every topic of conversation beyond food, distances
made good, temperatures, and the weather. Crean, as already set down, had
started with the Main Southern Party a week after Lashly and I had first
set out as the pioneers with those wretched failures, the motor sledges.
By this time I had made the unpleasant discovery that I was suffering
from scurvy. It came on with a stiffening of the knee joints, then I
could not straighten my legs, and finally they were horrible to behold,
swollen, bruised, and green. As day followed day my condition became
worse: my gums were ulcerated and my teeth loose. Then finally I got
haemorrhage. Crean and Lashly were dreadfully concerned on my behalf, and
how they nursed me and helped me along no words of mine can properly
describe. What men they were. Those awful days--I trudged on with them
for hundreds of miles, and each step hurt me more. I had done too much on
the outward journey, for what with building all the depot cairns ahead of
the pony party, and what with the effects of the spring sledge journey,
too much had been asked of me. I had never been out of harness from the
day I left Hut Point, for even with the motor sledges we practically
pulled them along. Crean had had an easier time, for he had led a pony up
to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, and Lashly had not done the spring
sledging journey, which took a certain amount out of me with its
temperatures falling to 73 degrees below zero. The disappointment of not
being included in the Polar Party had not helped me much, and I must
admit that my prospects of winning through became duller day by day. I