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be talking to a pony. He gave me a friendly cuff, then moved slowly away.
    “Merry Christmas to you, James Pigg,” he said.
    The sun swung very low in the north. The ice turned to many colors, to many shades of blue and red. Then down in the ship, the men started singing. Their songs were solemn and slow, but I felt happy that night, like a shipmate of them all.

    On the last day of the year, Captain Scott saw the mountains on the land ahead. He was standing at the rail with his head poking over a packing crate, staring eagerly to the south like a groundhog poking its head from a hole.
    When he saw the mountains, he cheered. Then everyone looked, and everyone cheered, and I could feel an excitement sweep over the ship like a fire. Even the dogs stirred restlessly, sensing that something had changed, or that something was about to happen. Captain Scott wore an expression of triumph, as though his goal had been only to
see
the mountains, that he could now turn the ship around and head for home.
    But the ship pressed on. The ice ground against the hull, forced aside as we moved south toward those mountains. And two hours later, though it didn’t matter to me, one year ended and another began.
    In the counting of men, it was now 1911.
    On the third day of the year, we saw the land along the sea. What a terrible place we’d come to, a world that seemed to guard itself with giant walls of ice and rock. There were mountains like dogs’ teeth, and one with a plume of smoke streaming from a rounded top, as though a great fire burned inside it. Glaciers tumbled down between the peaks andcalved into the sea with a constant roar and thunder. The cliff at the face of the glaciers was higher than the masts of the ship, and blocks of ice as big as houses split away and tumbled into the water. The sea churned at the foot of it, where icebergs rolled and tilted.
    I felt a sense of dread as I peered out from my stall. I saw the faces of the men, suddenly grim and thoughtful. Through squinted eyes they looked at the snow and the ice, at the mountains, but not at each other. The land was so cold and barren that it made me shiver. I saw no trees, no flowers, no grass or clover, no plants of any sort.
    But Captain Scott seemed perfectly happy. I could tell he was in love with this place. He had names for the mountains, for the bays and the capes, for the smoking peak with its white plume. He guided the ship along the edge of the ice cliff, around a point and around another. It was an island that we’d come to, but very different from the one we’d left. On three sides it was surrounded by ice, not water, and the only sand was in a black strip where I didn’t feel like running at all.
    Captain Scott knew every inch of it. A snow-covered beach appeared just where he said he would find one, and he brought the ship to the band of ice that floated in front of it, half a mile wide. The men set out anchors and moored to the ice. Their ropes froze stiff and straight, like iron rods.
    Off went the dogs, led over the side. Then out came the pony box, and this time I was glad to see it. Weary Willy went first. He bounded from the box as soon as it was opened, threw himself down on the snow-covered ice and squirmed like a cat, flat on his back with his legs in the air. I was so excited that I could hardly stand still in the box. Like Weary Willy, thefirst thing I did was lie down and roll onto my back. Some of the men laughed at me. But I didn’t care. It felt wonderful to stretch and scratch, to rub away the lice and the loose hair. My legs were happy because it was the first time in forty days that they didn’t have to hold me up.
    Weary Willy nibbled at my scabs and louse bites. I did the same for him, and then for Jehu and Nobby when they joined us. We stood in a happy group, all tending to one another.
    There was a very nice man with a very big name. Mr. Apsley Cherry-Garrard. To me, and to everyone, he was only Cherry. He was twenty-six, which