OHYAT: It Is the Tent

November 12. Nearly mid-day. 11-12 miles south of One Ton.
We have found them – to say it has been a ghastly day cannot express it – it is too bad for words. The tent was there, about a half-mile west of our course ... It was covered in snow and looked just like a cairn, only an extra gathering of snow showing where the ventilator was, and so we found the door.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard's diary

Silas had been the one to spot the tent. He had seen something unusual in the distance to the right of the mule party's course and eventually left the party to go investigate. "It was the 6 inches or so of the tip of a tent and was a great shock," he wrote in his memoir. He signalled to the party to stop, and they camped about 100 yards away from the object, waiting for Atch and Cherry's dogteams to arrive. When they did, he delivered his message: "It is the tent."

They cleared the snow away and stepped in. The three bodies lay as they had since March, sheltered by a tent pitched so well no snow had gotten in. Bill lay on the left, with his hands quietly folded over his chest and a peaceful look on his face. Birdie was to the right, much the same. Scott lay in the middle with one arm flung across Bill. The search party knew that documents were of the utmost importance so they set about collecting all they could find: diaries, letters, records ... Cherry found his book of Tennyson poetry which he'd lent Bill on the outward journey. "There was a letter there from Amundsen to King Haakon. There were the personal chatty little notes we had left for them on the Beardmore – how much more important to us than all the royal letters in the world."* Scott's diaries, which had been tucked in their cloth satchel underneath Scott's head, instructed the finder to read them, then to bring them home. Atch spent what seemed like hours in his tent, getting the gist of what had happened, then reported the story to the search party, and read Scott's Message to the Public and account of Oates' death, "which Scott had expressly wished to be known."
*This and subsequent quotes are from The Worst Journey in the World

Eventually all the documents, specimens, equipment, spare clothing, and assorted artefacts were collected and sorted, and it came time to put their comrades to rest. "We never moved them. We took the bamboos of the tent away, and the tent itself covered them. And over them we built the cairn." It grew to nearly 12 ft, and was topped by a cross made of skis.

I do not know how long we were there, but when all was finished, and the chapter of Corinthians had been read, it was Midnight of some day. The sun was dipping low above the Pole, and the Barrier was almost in shadow. And the sky was blazing – sheets and sheets of iridescent clouds. The cairn and Cross stood dark against a glory of burnished gold.