Consulting my old Antarctic diary I see that the last sentence written on the 17th January says, “I had to keep my goggles off all day as it was a matter of life or death with us, and snow blindness must be risked after ...” (a gap follows here until 29th January).  The next day I had an awful attack of snow blindness, but the way down the glacier was so easy that it did not matter.  I forgot whether Lashly or Crean led then, but I marched alongside, keeping in touch with the trace by hitching the lanyard of my sundial on to it and holding this in my hand.  I usually carried the sundial slung round my neck, so that it was easy to pick it up and consult it.  That day I was in awful pain, and although we had some dope for putting on our eyes when so smitten, I found that the greatest relief of all was obtained by bandaging my eyes with a poultice made of tea leaves after use—­quaint places, quaint practices but the tip is worth considering for future generations of explorers and alpine climbers.

Our homeward march continued for day after day with no very exciting incidents.  We met no more crevasses that were more than a foot or so wide, and we worked our way down on to the Great Ice Barrier with comparatively easy marches, although the distances we covered were surprising to us all—­seventeen miles a day we averaged.

On the 30th January Lashly and I had been fourteen weeks out, and we had exhausted practically every topic of conversation beyond food, distances made good, temperatures, and the weather.  Crean, as already set down, had started with the Main Southern Party a week after Lashly and I had first set out as the pioneers with those wretched failures, the motor sledges.  By this time I had made the unpleasant discovery that I was suffering from scurvy.  It came on with a stiffening of the knee joints, then I could not straighten my legs, and finally they were horrible to behold, swollen, bruised, and green.  As day followed day my condition became worse:  my gums were ulcerated and my teeth loose.  Then finally I got haemorrhage.  Crean and Lashly were dreadfully concerned on my behalf, and how they nursed me and helped me along no words of mine can properly describe.  What men they were.  Those awful days—­I trudged on with them for hundreds of miles, and each step hurt me more.  I had done too much on the outward journey, for what with building all the depot cairns ahead of the pony party, and what with the effects of the spring sledge journey, too much had been asked of me.  I had never been out of harness from the day I left Hut Point, for even with the motor sledges we practically pulled them along.  Crean had had an easier time, for he had led a pony up to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier, and Lashly had not done the spring sledging journey, which took a certain amount out of me with its temperatures falling to 73 degrees below zero.  The disappointment of not being included in the Polar Party had not helped me much, and I must admit that