"Started usual time. Quan (pony) got through the forenoon fairly well
with assistance, but after lunch the poor chap broke down and we had
to take him out of harness. Shackleton, Adams, and Marshall dragged
his sledge, and I brought the ponies along with the other load. As
soon as we camped I gave Quan the bullet, and Marshall and I cut him
up. He was a tough one. I am cook this week with Marshall as my tent
mate."

The more one read into Shackleton's story the more wonderful it all
seemed, and with our resources failure appeared impossible--yet that
telegram which Captain Scott had received at Melbourne:

"Beg leave to inform you proceeding Antarctic.
----AMUNDSEN."

We all knew that Amundsen had no previous Antarctic sledging experience,
but no one could deny that to Norwegians ice-work, and particularly
ski-ing, was second nature, and here lay some good food for thought and
discussion. Where would the "Fram" enter the pack? Where would Amundsen
make his base? The answers never once suggested anything like the truth.

Actually on New Year's Day Amundsen was between 500 and 600 miles north
of us, but of Roald Amundsen more anon.

How strange to be once more in open water, able to steer whatever course
we chose, with broad daylight all night, and at noon only a couple of
days' run from Cape Crozier. Practically no ice in sight, but a sunlit
summer sea in place of the pack, with blue sky and cumulo stratus clouds,
so different from the gray, hard skies that hung so much over the great