CHAPTER V

THE DEPÔT JOURNEY

The dropping of the daylight in the west.
ROBERT BROWNING.


January to March 1911

SCOTT MEARES CREAN
WILSON ATKINSON FORDE
LIEUT. EVANS CHERRY-GARRARD DIMITRI
BOWERS GRAN
OATES KEOHANE

Imaginative friends of the thirteen men who started from Cape Evans on
January 24, 1911, may have thought of them as athletes, trained for some
weeks or months to endure the strains which they were to face, sleeping a
good nine hours a night, eating carefully regulated meals and doing an
allotted task each day under scientific control.

They would be far from the mark. For weeks we had turned in at midnight
too tired to take off our clothes, and had been lucky if we were allowed
to sleep until 5 A.M. We had eaten our meals when we could, and we had
worked in the meantime just as hard as it was physically possible to do.
If we sat down on a packing-case we went to sleep.