During the day we knocked off over 14 miles of those intervening between us and our goal, and we turned in for the night in a more cheerful frame of mind. Our rest, however, was disturbed by the mischievous Quan eating away the straps on his rug, and Grisi and Socks fighting over it. The propensities of Manchurian ponies for eating peculiar things must certainly be allowed to have their drawbacks. Such accidents may seem very trivial, but they meant work for us in repairing the damage, and when one is thoroughly tired after a day's march one does not welcome any unlooked for labour. To our astonishment during our march in the afternoon we came across the track of an Adelie penguin, and where on earth the bird had come from was a mystery. It had been travelling on its stomach for a long way, and it had at least fifty miles to travel before it could reach food and water, and the nearest water in the direction from which it had come was over fifty miles away. Among penguins this bird ought, I think, to have been credited with an adventurous disposition. With better weather for the next few days we made good progress towards the depot where 167 lb. of pony food was lying, and our appetites were already too good for the amount of food we were allowing ourselves. Perhaps those who have never known what it is to be desperately hungry will be disgusted at us for remembering that when the ponies had done their work we should be able to add horse-meat to our rations. But I can say with truth that until the ponies had to be killed they were treated with a liberality that we denied sternly to ourselves. [Illustration: Cape Barne and Inaccessible Island by Moonlight] To pick up a depot which is only a tiny speck in a vast snowy plain and is nearly sixty miles from the nearest land, is like picking up a buoy in the North Sea with only distant mountains for bearings, and I was most anxious that we should reach it before the glorious weather broke up, for there was stored not only the pony feed but also a most valuable gallon of oil. Imagine then my delight when, on the evening of the 14th, Wild, who was outside the camp looking through the Goertz glasses, shouted that he could see the depot. We rushed out at once, and there were the flag and sledge to be seen plainly through the glasses. On the next morning we found everything intact and the flag waving merrily in the breeze, and we camped there for a few hours so that we could distribute weights and parcel our provision to be left there for our return journey. It went to our hearts to leave a tin of sardines and a pot of black currant jam which we had intended for our feast on Christmas Day, but every ounce of additional weight was so important, that although we felt that we ought to take as much food as we possibly could these luxuries had to be left behind.