Pathetically small did the bamboo look which we left to mark the little stock of provisions--indeed, we lost sight of it in half an hour, and had to trust that our footprints in the snow would guide us back again to the depot. By night, however, I knew--and had to acknowledge--that our limit was almost reached. We had only been carrying 70 lb. per man since we had made our last depot, but it was harder work than the 100 odd lb. we had been pulling the day before, and far harder than 250 lb. had seemed some three weeks previously. Nothing could more clearly have convinced me of our failing strength, even if I could have shut my eyes to the facts that our faces were cut, our feet and hands always on the verge of frost-bite, our boots nearly worn out, and that when we got up in the morning out of the wet bag, our Burberries became immediately like a coat of mail, and also that our heads and beards got iced up with the moisture when breathing on the march. What we would have given at that time for a pair of scissors to trim our beards I should not like to say, and had we known that we were going to experience such cold weather we should certainly have kept a pair. The main things, indeed, against us were the altitude and ice-cold wind. Nature had declared against us, and at the best I had to abandon all hopes of getting nearer than 100 geographical miles to the Pole. During the next day we were absolutely obliged to increase our food if we were to get on at all, for our temperatures were far below normal, and I had such a headache that I should be sorry for any living man who had to endure such pain. Never once had the thermometer been above zero since we had been on to the plateau, though this was the height of summer, and on January 6 we had to endure 57° of frost with a strong blizzard and high drift. Still, helped by the bigger rations--which did not amount to anything approaching full rations--we marched thirteen and a quarter geographical miles and reached 88° 7′ south. But at night I had to admit that this must be our last outward march, though I determined that we would make one more rush south with the flag. With what feelings of sadness I came to this decision I cannot even try to describe. Only one thing softened our grievous disappointment, and that was the conviction that we had striven to the very limit of our strength, and had not given in until the forces of nature combined with our scanty supply of food had conquered us. Two days, however, had to be passed in our bags before we could make the final dash with the flag, days of shrieking blizzard and piercing cold, days in which our valuable food was going without our marching, and in which we had a gloomy foreboding that our tracks, to which we were trusting mainly to find our depot, might drift up.