This suggested
to me that the thaw pool off Cape Armitage was even bigger than I
thought and that we were getting on to ice which was breaking up, to
flow north into it. We stopped to consider, and found that the cracks
in the ice we were on were the rise and fall of a swell. Knowing that
the ice might remain like this with each piece tight against the next
only until the tide turned, I knew that we must get off it at once in
case the tide did turn in the next half-hour, when each crack would
open up into a wide lead of open water and we should find ourselves
on an isolated floe. So we at once turned and went back as fast as
possible to the unbroken sea ice. Obviously it was now unsafe to go
round to Hut Point by Cape Armitage and we therefore made for the
Gap. It was between eight and nine in the evening when we turned,
and we soon came in sight of the pony party, led as we thought by
Captain Scott. We were within 1/2 a mile of them when we hurried
right across their bows and headed straight for the Gap, making a
course more than a right angle off the course we had been on. There
was the seals' pressure ridge of sea ice between us and them, but as
I could see them quite distinctly I had no doubt they could see us,
and we were occupied more than once just then in beating the teams
off stray seals, so that we didn't go by either vary quickly or very
silently. From here we ran into the Gap, where there was some nasty
pressed-up ice to cross and large gaps and cracks by the ice foot;
but with the Alpine rope and a rush we got first one team over and
then the other without mishap on to the land ice, and were then
practically at Hut Point.
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