The mounds which we had laid on our way out continued to guide us on our return, and were a great comfort, but all our thoughts and our conversation were about food. Wind and weather helped us through that desperate time, or again in our weakened and starving condition we could never have hoped to reach our next depot. Assisted, however, as we were, we reached the depot on February 13 without a single particle of food left. There we found poor old Chinaman's liver, and thought it a dish that kings might envy. We looked round for any spare bits of meat, and while I was digging in the snow I came across some hard red stuff, which turned out to be Chinaman's blood frozen into a solid core. We dug it up, and in such straits were we that we found it a most welcome addition to our food. When boiled up, it seemed to us like beef-tea. Truly I was in luck in those days, for the fifteenth of February was my birthday, and I was given a present of a cigarette made out of pipe tobacco and some paper we had with us. It tasted absolutely delicious. Those, however, were glad moments in a most distressing time, for on the day following my smoke all of us were again so appallingly hungry, and consequently so weak, that even to lift our almost empty provision-bag was an effort. When we broke camp in the morning we pulled the tent off the poles and took it down before we moved the things inside, for the effort of lifting anything through the doorway was too much for us. At night we sometimes had to lift our legs one at a time with both hands in getting them into the tent, and after we had stiffened from the day's march it seemed almost impossible to lift our feet without assistance. On the 17th we had to march in a blinding blizzard, with 42° of frost, but mercifully the wind was behind us; and although the sledge with the sail up sometimes overran us and sometimes, getting into a patch of soft snow, brought us up with a jerk, we were thankful that we had not to face such a wind. The jerks, however, were very painful; for when we were brought up suddenly, the harness round our weakened stomachs hurt us very much indeed. All of us had tragic dreams of getting food to eat, and with four men as hungry as we were, I can assure you that it saves much envy if all of them finish their meal at precisely the same moment. The man in our party who managed to make his hoosh last longer than the rest of us was not for the time being at all a popular man. On the 18th we sighted Mount Discovery, and it seemed to be a connecting link between us and our winter quarters. Its big, bluff form showed out in the north-west, and we felt that this same mountain might at the very moment be drawing the eyes of our own people. It looked like a reminder that there was still a place called "home," and helped to cheer us on our painful way.