The event has justified my original arguments, but I must confess a
sense of having assumed security without sufficient proof in a case
where an error of judgment might have had dire consequences.
It was not until I found all safe at the Home Station that I realised
how anxious I had been concerning it. In a normal season no thought
of its having been in danger would have occurred to me, but since the
loss of the ponies and the breaking of the Glacier Tongue I could not
rid myself of the fear that misfortune was in the air and that some
abnormal swell had swept the beach; gloomy thoughts of the havoc that
might have been wrought by such an event would arise in spite of the
sound reasons which had originally led me to choose the site of the
hut as a safe one.
The late freezing of the sea, the terrible continuance of wind and
the abnormalities to which I have referred had gradually strengthened
the profound distrust with which I had been forced to regard our
mysterious Antarctic climate until my imagination conjured up many
forms of disaster as possibly falling on those from whom I had parted
for so long.
We marched towards Cape Evans under the usually miserable conditions
which attend the breaking of camp in a cold wind after a heavy
blizzard. The outlook was dreary in the grey light of early morning,
our clothes were frozen stiff and our fingers, wet and cold in the
tent, had been frostbitten in packing the sledges.
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