[33] A. A. Milne.




CHAPTER I

FROM ENGLAND TO SOUTH AFRICA

Take a bowsy short leave of your nymphs on the shore,
And silence their mourning with vows of returning,
Though never intending to visit them more.
_Dido and Aeneas._


Scott used to say that the worst part of an expedition was over when the
preparation was finished. So no doubt it was with a sigh of relief that
he saw the Terra Nova out from Cardiff into the Atlantic on June 15,
1910. Cardiff had given the expedition a most generous and enthusiastic
send-off, and Scott announced that it should be his first port on
returning to England. Just three years more and the Terra Nova, worked
back from New Zealand by Pennell, reached Cardiff again on June 14, 1913,
and paid off there.

From the first everything was informal and most pleasant, and those who
had the good fortune to help in working the ship out to New Zealand,
under steam or sail, must, in spite of five months of considerable
discomfort and very hard work, look back upon the voyage as one of the
very happiest times of the expedition. To some of us perhaps the voyage
out, the three weeks in the pack ice going South, and the Robinson Crusoe