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Updated: May 7, 2025
At the hotel another telegram awaited him. "Good old Ponting!" he exclaimed, after reading it. The message ran: "We have won it. He said: "Why 'we, Ponting? You didn't win it. I won it." He said: "Sir Hugh Corver is not going to be the head of the architectural profession. I am." He felt the assurance of that in his bones.
Away he dashed with sledge attached; he made straight for the other ponies, but finding the incubus still fast to him he went in wider circles, galloped over hills and boulders, narrowly missing Ponting and his camera, and finally dashed down hill to camp again pretty exhausted oddly enough neither sledge nor pony was much damaged. Then we departed again in the same order.
Yesterday Wilson, Crean, P.O. Evans, and I donned our sledging kit and camped by the bergs for the benefit of Ponting and his cinematograph; he got a series of films which should be about the most interesting of all his collection. I imagine nothing will take so well as these scenes of camp life. On our return we found Meares had returned; he and the dogs well.
The lectures embraced the technical and the practical side of the Expedition; thus, besides each of the scientific staff lecturing on his individual subject, Oates gave us two lectures on the care and management of horses; Scott outlined his plans for the great southern journey, giving probable dates and explaining the system of supporting parties which he proposed to employ; Ponting told us about Japan, and illustrated his subject with beautiful slides made from photographs that he himself had taken; Bowers lectured on Burma, until we longed to be there; and Meares gave us a light but intensely interesting lecture on his adventures in the Lolo country, a practically unknown land in Central Asia.
Remindful of superstition, provocative of imagination. There is argument on the confession of Ponting's inability to obtain photographs of the aurora. Professor Stormer of Norway seems to have been successful. Simpson made notes of his method, which seems to depend merely on the rapidity of lens and plate. Ponting claims to have greater rapidity in both, yet gets no result even with long exposure.
For the last six months Ponting had been running it with an assistant under him, and between them they had done wonders with it, considering. And on the Sunday something occurred that confirmed him in his rosy optimism. His father was having another good day, and they had wheeled him into the front sitting-room.
Withal it is still a very long way from the fate of the 'one-horse shay. Taylor gave us his final physiographical lecture last night. It was completely illustrated with slides made from our own negatives, Ponting's Alpine work, and the choicest illustrations of certain scientific books. The preparation of the slides had involved a good deal of work for Ponting as well as for the lecturer.
Who first to hear the wondrous news but his Princess? That there was a vacancy in Hickney Heath he knew, as all Great Britain knew; for Ponting, the Radical Member, had died suddenly the day before. But it had never entered his head that he could be chosen as a candidate. "Mais j'y ai bien pense, moi," came the voice through the telephone.
Next day we put out, but got blown down the coast; we got smashed landing; all but a chap named Ponting and me went under, but one chap's body was hove up and we stripped him. I've got his boots and his knife in that bundle over there in the cave, and Ponting's. We saved a bag of bread."
The weather had cleared again, after a tremendous blow from the south, and as they sat that evening in the sunset blaze before the caves, Raft, who had been staring steadfastly out to sea as if watching something, began to talk. "That chap Ponting told me this side of the coast is no use for ships," said he. "They keep beyond them islands for fear of the reefs.
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