As I have said elsewhere, we got into frightfully rough ice and Edgar
Evans received a concussion of the brain--he died a natural death, but
left us a shaken party with the season unduly advanced.
But all the facts above enumerated were as nothing to the surprise which
awaited us on the Barrier. I maintain that our arrangements for returning
were quite adequate, and that no one in the world would have expected the
temperatures and surfaces which we encountered at this time of the year.
On the summit in lat. 85 deg.-86 deg. we had -20 deg., -30 deg.. On the Barrier in lat.
82 deg., 10,000 feet lower, we had -30 deg. in the day, -47 deg. at night pretty
regularly, with continuous head-wind during our day marches. It is clear
that these circumstances come on very suddenly, and our wreck is
certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather, which does not
seem to have any satisfactory cause. I do not think human beings ever
came through such a month as we have come through, and we should have got
through in spite of the weather but for the sickening of a second
companion, Captain Oates, and a shortage of fuel in our depots for which
I cannot account, and finally, but for the storm which has fallen on us
within 11 miles of the depot at which we hoped to secure our final
supplies. Surely misfortune could scarcely have exceeded this last blow.
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