14 February, 1911

Darn it all. The surface is very bad the going is very hard. The ponies sink in the soft spots left by the recent blizzards. I consulted Oates as to how far we could go today and he cheerfully replied 15 miles which rather piqued me. Gran, leading Weary Willie was incredibly slow, so much so that he was dropped back a good three-quarters of a mile by the time we camped for lunch. There was a clearly a disturbance as the dogs came up so Oates and I went back to see what happened. The pony had floundered and when he fell, hte hungry dogs broke free with their sledge and set upon him like a pack of wolves. There was quite a melee, with Gran breaking a ski stick and Meares breaking a dog stick, but they managed to pull them apart. Weary Willy was quite badly mauled and we brought him in to camp covered in blood. None of the dogs were injured. We have him a hot meal, extra blankets and built him a good wall for shelter in the hopes that he'll recover. After lunch four of us had to go back to drag his sledge and I was most annoyed; this pony was carrying more weight than the rest. I blame myself for not supervising more closely and for allowing them to get so far behind.

I am too tired to even dream of Kathleen on this, Saint Valentine's Day.