The sun was low in the south when, cigars out and conversation lagging, we finally toggled in for the finest sleep of the whole journey.
The cook, under a doubtful inspiration, broke forth, later on, into a Christmas Carol:
For the first ten miles on the afternoon of the 28th, the sail was reefed down to prevent the sledge overrunning us on smooth patches. Not far past the one-hundred-and-ninety-mile mound, which was missed in the drift, we picked up some of the outward tracks—a bas-relief of three footsteps and a yard of sledge-meter track, raised half an inch and undercut by the wind. It was not very much, but quite a comfort when one is navigating in blinding weather.
At 11.30 P.M. we had marched twenty-one miles, and both light and surface were improving, so I proposed making a long run of it. Hurley and Webb eagerly agreed, and we had a preparatory hoosh. Ten miles scudded by monotonously without a sign of the mounds around the one-hundred-and-seventy-mile camp. As we were in the vicinity of a point where we had determined to diverge from our outward track, a course was laid direct for the one-hundred-and-thirteen-mile mark. The sledge-meter, which had been affixed, made its presence evident from time to time by ringing like a cash register, as still another broken spoke struck the forks. We would halt for a moment and extract the remains. Out of the original thirty-six wire spokes, only twelve wire and one wooden one remained. At 11.30 A.M. on December 29, a halt was called and the sledge-meter was then lying over on its side with a helpless expression. It indicated twenty-two miles, making, so we thought, a total of forty-three miles in the twenty-two and a quarter hours since leaving the depot. Observations for position next day proved that in its dying effort it exaggerated the truth; the total run being 41.6 miles.
We were now well ahead of schedule time, there being four and a half days' surplus food; above what was probably required to reach the sixty-seven-and-a-half-mile depot. It was decided to hold three days of this and to use one and a half days food as a bonus during the coming week, as long as we were ahead of our necessary distance. The sledging ration is quite enough to live on, but for the whole of the journey we had felt that we could have done more distance on a slightly larger ration. This may be partly explained by our comparatively high altitude.
Next morning the sledge-meter was cut away and stuck in the snow. It looked very forlorn sitting askew in its forks, with a pair of worn-out finnesko hanging over it.
After twelve miles with a favourable wind, Webb took more observations; Hurley and I recording by turns. There were several small holes in the tent which needed mending, and I experimented with adhesive plaster from the medical kit with great success. Heated over a fusee and pressed hard down between the bottoms of mugs, held outside and inside, the patches adhered well and made a permanent job.
Early on December 31, 1912, snow was falling. The light gave Hurley an attack of snow-blindness and a miserable day. Crampons were worn to give some security to the foothold on the uneven track. The position, after a trudge of fifteen miles, was estimated at five miles east of the one-hundred-and-twenty-three-mile mound.
On New Year's Day, 1913, the wind was fresher and the surface improved. Estimation placed us to the north of one hundred and thirteen miles, but we were not hopeful in the light falling snow of seeing a mound. Soon, however, the snow ceased, and Webb made out a hillock two miles ahead. It was identified as the one at one hundred and nine miles.
It had been my turn to be snowblind. I was so bad that the only thing to do was to camp or ride on the sledge. The trail changed here to straight downwind, so Webb and Hurley undertook the job, hauling the sledge with me as a passenger for three and a half miles to the one-hundred-and-five-mile mound. It must have been a trying finish to a run of twenty miles.
In spite of the spell, which was a sleepless one, I was no better in the morning and again had to ride. The others pulled away for five miles with a good helping wind, but in a provoking light. The camp was made where the one-hundred-mile mound was judged to be. We spent longer over lunch, hoping that the clouds would clear. At last we moved on, or rather I was moved on. After two miles the surface became heavier. My eyes were better now on account of the rest and a snow "poultice" Webb had invented. I harnessed-in for five miles over light, unpacked snow, with piecrust underneath. The day's work was twelve miles.
The snow-clouds broke at noon on January 3, and a reliable latitude was obtained. It agreed with our reckoning. Persevering over the same trying surface as on the previous day, we sighted the ninety-mile-mound in the rear as a rift broke in the sky. We must have passed a few hundred yards from it.
We were still eleven miles from the depot, so at breakfast on the 4th the rations were reduced by one-half to give plenty of time to locate our goal. On the 4th the sky was clear, but surface drift prevented us from seeing any mounds till, in the afternoon, the ramps near the sixty-seven-mile depot were discovered in fitful glimpses. They bore too much to the north, so we altered course correspondingly to the west, camping in rising wind and drift, with great hopes for the morrow.
A densely overcast sky on the 5th; light snow falling! We moved on two miles, but not being able to see one hundred yards, camped again; then walking as far as seemed safe in various directions. One could do nothing but wait for clear weather. The clouds lightened at 6 P.M. and again at 9 P.M., when altitudes of the sun were secured, putting us four miles south of the depot.
With only one chronometer watch, one has to rely entirely on dead reckoning for longitude, the rate of a single watch being very variable. The longitude obtained on this occasion from our latest known rate moved us several miles to the east of the depot, so I concluded that our distances since the camp at ninety miles had been overestimated, and that we were probably to the south-east of it. Accordingly, we shifted four miles to the north-west, but by this time it had again clouded over and nothing could be seen.
On the 6th the sky was still overcast, but a lucky peep at noon aligned us on the exact latitude of the depot. We walked east and west, but it snowed persistently and everything was invisible.
It is weary work waiting in the tent for weather to improve. During this time Hurley amused himself and us by composing a Christmas carol on the Christmas dinner; a fragment from which has already appeared. I whiled away a whole afternoon, cutting up the remains of two cigars which had refused to draw. Sliced up with a pair of scissors and mixed with a few of Hurley's cigarettes, they made very good smoking tobacco.
On the 7th the sky was immovable, and we trekked four miles due east, camped once more and walked about without finding our goal.
I now decided that if the weather did not improve by the morning, we should have to dash for the north. It was a risk, but matters were coming to a serious pass. On broaching the subject to Webb and Hurley, they unconditionally agreed with me.
At 3 A.M. the sky cleared rapidly and we turned out and saw the ramps plainly to the east. Webb set up the theodolite while Hurley and I paced out a half-mile base-line to find out the intervening distance. Just as we got to the end of it, however, the clouds came over again and the ramps faded.
There was only one thing for it now, and that was to make a break for the coast. Of food, there was one full day's ration with enough pemmican for half a hoosh, six lumps of sugar and nine raisins, rather the worse for wear, oil for two days, and, last but not least, a pint of alcohol. After four days on half-rations we felt fairly fit, thanks no doubt to the good meals of the previous week.
There were sixty-seven miles to go, and in case we did not happen on the narrow descent to the Hut, the food was apportioned to last for five days. Everything unessential was stripped off the sledge, including dip-circle, thermometers, hypsometer, camera, spare clothing and most of the medical and repair kits.
At 7 A.M. we set off on the final stage of the journey. The sky was densely overcast and snow was falling, but there was a strong wind almost behind. We would march for an hour by my wrist-watch, halt for five minutes and on again till all agreed that we had covered ten miles; when it was lunch time. Each man's share of this consisted of one-third of a biscuit, one-third of an ounce of butter and a drink made of a spoonful of glaxo-and-sugar and one of absolute alcohol, mixed in a mug of lukewarm water. We could not afford oil enough to do much more than thaw the water, but the alcohol warmed us splendidly, enabling us to get a good rest.
After an hour's spell we started again, luckily seeing just enough of the sun to check the course. The wind grew stronger in the afternoon and several times dense fog-banks drove down on us. Meeting one steep rise, we sidled round it for what seemed hours, but my chief memory of that afternoon was of the clouds of the northern horizon. They were a deep bluish-grey colour—a typical "water-sky"—but I have never seen clouds moving so fast. It was like trying to steer by one particular phase in a kaleidoscope. When all were satisfied that twenty miles had been covered we camped.
Dinner consisted of a very watery hoosh, followed up by a mug of alcohol and water. We were all very thankful for the forethought of Dr. Mawson in providing absolute alcohol for lighting the primus, instead of methylated spirit.
Breakfast on the 9th was of about the same consistency as dinner on the night before, except that cocoa replaced the alcohol. In fact, breakfast was possibly even more watery, as I was in charge of the food-bag and surreptitiously decided to make the rations last six days instead of five.
This was the worst day's march of the journey. The wind was booming along at sixty miles per hour with dense drift and falling snow. What made it worse was that it came from the south-east, forcing us to pull partly across it. I was the upwind wheeler and had to hitch on to the side of the sledge to reduce the leeway as much as possible. The sledge was being continually jammed into big, old, invisible sastrugi and we fell about in the wind until crampons became absolutely necessary.
At 4 P.M. we were disgusted to find that the wind had veered to south-by-east. So for possibly several hours we had been doing Heaven only knows how many times the amount of work necessary, and for any time up to four hours might have been marching three points off our course. Being blown straight downwind, the sledge made rapid progress, and about 6 P.M. a halt was called for lunch. This was over almost as soon as it was begun, but we had a good rest, sheltering ourselves with the floor-cloth from the wind which blew through the tent.
Off again, we "plugged" away until midnight when we were much surprised to find the usual snow surface merging into blue ice. The tent was pitched on the latter, snow being procured from the bridge of a crevasse as we had no pick: even the ice-axe having been left behind.
Turning out on the morning of the 10th, we were delighted to find the sky clearing and the wind moderating. And then, far away on the northern horizon a beautiful line of blue sea dotted with bergs!
We now officially considered ourselves to be twenty-seven miles from the Hut. As we should not have met blue ice on the proper course till we were only thirteen miles out, it was thought that we had edged a long way to the east the day before. When a start was made, we manoeuvred to the west in looking for a crossing-place at each crevasse.
It was not long before the bergs on the horizon were noticeably enlarging, and at last we realized that in reality it was only a few miles to them. Suddenly the grade increased, the ice becoming much lacerated; and we had some trouble getting the sledge along. Hurley was snow-blind and had one eye covered. He looked very comical feeling his way over the crevasses, but he probably did not feel over-humorous.
I was in the lead, and suddenly coming over a ridge above a steep ice-fall, I caught sight of the Mackellar Islets and the old "Piano" berg. Just at the same instant the spur of ice on which I was standing collapsed, and down I went into a crevasse. The others quickly had me out, and, as soon as I was in the upper air, I gave them the news: "There are the Islands!" Being twenty feet farther back on the rope they had not yet seen them.
We were now able to place ourselves about three miles west of Aladdin's Cave. The last camp must have been thirteen miles from the Hut, and we had really done twenty-seven miles each day instead of our conservative twenty.
We tried to work along to the east, but the ice was too much broken, so the camp was made on a patch of snow. In view of our good fortune, I produced that evening's ration of hoosh in addition to our usual lunch. Even this meagre spree went against Hurley's feelings, for, being snow-blind, he had not been able to see the islands and positively would not believe that we were nearly home.
After lunch it was necessary to retrace our way upwind to get out of the rough country. About midnight, Webb recognized Aladdin's Cave. Hurley and I had a competition as to who should see it first, for I was also getting a little blind again. We had a dead-heat at one hundred and fifty yards.
The first thing to arrest our attention was a tin of dog biscuits. These kept things going till we dug out a food tank from which was rapidly extracted a week's supply of chocolate. After that we proceeded in a happier frame of mind to open up the cave and have a meal.
The journey of more than six hundred miles was now practically over. After a carousal lasting till 5 P.M. on the 11th, we went down hill, arriving just after dinner and finding all well.
We three had never thought the Hut quite such a fine place, nor have we ever since.
The Eastern Coastal party consisted of Dr. A. L. McLean, P. E. Correll and myself. For weeks all preparations had been made; the decking put on the sledge, runners polished, cooker- and instrument-boxes attached, mast erected, spar and sail rigged, instruments and clothing collected, tent strengthened—all the impedimenta of a sledge journey arranged and rearranged, and still the blizzard raged on. Would we never get away? November arrived, and still the wind kept up daily averages of over fifty miles per hour, with scarce a day without drifting snow.
At last it was decided that a start must soon be made even though it ended in failure, so that we received orders to set out on November 6, or the first possible day after it.
Friday November 8 broke, a clear driftless day, and Murphy's party left early in the morning. By noon, Stillwell's party (Stillwell, Hodgeman and Close), and we, were ready to start. The former were bound on a short journey to the near east and were to support us until we parted company.
All was bustle and excitement. Every one turned out to see us off. Breaking an empty sauce-bottle over the bow of our sledge, we christened it the M.H.S. Championship (Man-Hauled Sledge). The name was no boastful prevision of mighty deeds, as, at the Hut, a "Championship" was understood to mean some careless action usually occasioning damage to property, while our party included several noted "champions."
Mertz harnessed a dog-team to the sledge and helped us up the first steep slope. With hearty handshakes and a generous cheer from the other fellows, we started off and were at last away, after many months of hibernation in the Hut, to chance the hurricanes and drifting snow and to push towards the unknown regions to the east.
At the steepest part of the rise we dismissed our helpers and said good-bye. McLean and Correll joined me on the sledge and we continued on to Aladdin's Cave.
As we mounted the glacier the wind increased, carrying surface drift which obscured the view to within one hundred yards. It was this which made us pass the Cave on the eastern side and pull up on a well-known patch of snow in a depression to the south of our goal. It was not long before a momentary clearing of the drift showed Aladdin's Cave with its piles of food-tanks, kerosene, dog biscuit and pemmican, and, to our dismay, a burberry-clad figure moving about among the accumulation. Murphy's party were in possession when we expected them to be on the way south to another cave—the Cathedral Grotto—eleven and three-quarter miles from the Hut. Of course the rising wind and drift had stopped them.
It was then 5 P.M., so we did not wait to discuss the evident proposition as to which of the three parties should occupy the Cave, but climbed down into it at once and boiled up hoosh and tea. Borrowing tobacco from the supporting parties, we reclined at ease, and then in that hazy atmosphere so dear to smokers, its limpid blue enhanced by the pale azure of the ice, we introduced the subject of occupation as if it were a sudden afterthought.
It was soon decided to enlarge the Cave to accommodate five men, the other four consenting to squeeze into Stillwell's big tent. McLean volunteered to join Stillwell's party in the tent, while Correll and I were to stay in the Cave with Murphy and company.
I went outside and selected ten weeks' provisions from the pile of food-tanks and piled them beside the sledge. McLean attended to the thermograph which Bage and I had installed in the autumn. Meanwhile, in a fifty-mile wind, Stillwell and his men erected the tent. Hunter and Laseron started with picks and shovels to enlarge the Cave, and, working in relays, we had soon expanded it to eight feet by seven feet.
The men from the tent came down to "high dinner" at eight o'clock. They reported weather conditions unimproved and the temperature -3 degrees F.
Early next morning I dug my way out and found that the surface drift had increased with a wind of fifty-five miles per hour. It was obviously impossible to start.
After breakfast it was arranged that those outside should have their meals separately, digging down at intervals to let us know the state of the weather. It was not pleasant for us, congested as we were in the Cave, to have visitors sliding down through the opening with a small avalanche of snow in their train. Further, to increase their own discomfort, they arrived covered in snow, and what they were unable to shake off thawed and wet them, subsequently freezing again to the consistency of a starched collar.
The opening was, therefore, kept partly closed with a food-tank. The result was that a good deal of snow came in, while the hole diminished in size. For a man to try to crawl out in stiff burberrys appeared as futile as for a porcupine to try to go backwards up a canvas hose.
The day passed slowly in our impatience. We took turns at reading 'The Virginian', warmed by a primus stove which in a land of plenty we could afford to keep going. Later in the afternoon the smokers found that a match would not strike, and the primus went out. Then the man reading said that he felt unwell and could not see the words. Soon several others commented on feeling "queer," and two in the sleeping-bags had fallen into a drowsy slumber. On this evidence even the famous Watson would have "dropped to it," but it was some time before it dawned on us that the oxygen had given out. Then there was a rush for shovels. The snow, ice and food-tank were tightly wedged, at the mouth of the entrance, and it took some exertion to perforate through to the outside air with an ice-axe. At once every one speedily recovered. Later, another party had a worse experience, not forgetting to leave a warning note behind them. We should have done the same.
The weather was no better by the evening, and during the night the minimum thermometer registered -12 degrees F.
At six o'clock on Sunday morning, November 10, McLean dug down to us with the news that the wind had abated to thirty miles per hour with light surface drift.
We hurried through breakfast, rolled up the bags and started packing the sledge. Three 100-lb. food-tanks, one 50-lb. bag opened for ready use, and four gallons of kerosene were selected. Stillwell took for us a 50-lb. food-tank, a 56-lb. tin of wholemeal biscuits, and a gallon of kerosene. With the 850 lbs. of food, 45 lbs. of kerosene, three sleeping-bags of 10 lbs. each, a tent of 40 lbs., 86 lbs. of clothing and personal gear for three men, a cooker, primus, pick, shovel, ice-axe, alpine rope, dip-circle, theodolite, tripod, smaller instruments such as aneroid, barometer and thermometer, tools, medical outfit and sledge-fittings, our total load amounted to nearly 800 lbs., and Stillwell's was about the same.
All were ready at 9 A.M., and, shaking hands with Murphy's party, who set off due south, we steered with Stillwell to the south-east. The preliminary instructions were to proceed south-east from the Cave to a distance of eighteen miles and there await the arrival of Dr. Mawson and his party, who were to overtake us with their dogteams.
The first few miles gave a gradual rise of one hundred feet per mile, so that, with a heavy load against wind and drift, travelling was very slow. The wind now dropped to almost calm, and the drift cleared. In the afternoon progress was hampered by crevasses, which were very frequent, running east and west and from one to twenty feet in width. The wider ones were covered with firm snow-bridges; the snow in places having formed into granular and even solid ice. What caused most delay were the detours of several hundreds of yards which had to be made to find a safe crossing over a long, wide crevasse. At 6.30 P.M. we pitched camp, having only made five miles from the Cave.
We got away at 9 A.M. the next morning. Throughout the whole journey we thought over the same mysterious problem as confronted many another sledger: Where did the time go to in the mornings? Despite all our efforts we could not cut down the interval from "rise and shine" to the start below two hours.
Early that day we had our first experience of the treacherous crevasse. Correll went down a fissure about three feet wide. I had jumped across it, thinking the bridge looked thin, but Correll stepped on it and went through. He dropped vertically down the full length of his harness—six feet. McLean and I soon had him out. The icy walls fell sheer for about sixty feet, where snow could be seen in the blue depths. Our respect for crevasses rapidly increased after this, and we took greater precautions, shuddering to think of the light-hearted way we had trudged over the wider ones.
At twelve miles, blue, wind-swept ice gave place to an almost flat snow surface. Meanwhile the sky had rapidly clouded over, and the outlook was threatening. The light became worse, and the sastrugi indistinguishable. Such a phenomenon always occurs on what we came to call a "snow-blind day." On these days the sky is covered with a white, even pall of cloud, and cloud and plateau seem as one. One walks into a deep trench or a sastruga two feet high without noticing it. The world seems one huge, white void, and the only difference between it and the pitch-dark night is that the one is white and the other black.
Light snow commenced at 2.30 P.M., the wind rising to forty-five miles per hour with heavy drift. Thirteen miles out we pitched camp.
This, the first "snow-blind day" claimed McLean for its victim. By the time we were under cover of the tent, his eyes were very sore, aching with a throbbing pain. At his request I placed a zinc-cocaine tablet in each eye. He spent the rest of the day in the darkness of his sleeping-bag and had his eyes bandaged all next day. Up till then we had not worn goggles, but were careful afterwards to use them on the trying, overcast days.
For four and a half days the weather was too bad to travel. On the 14th the wind increased and became steady at sixty miles per hour, accompanied by dense drifting snow. We found it very monotonous lying in the tent. As always happens during heavy drifts, the temperature outside was high, on this day averaging about 12 degrees F.; inside the tent it was above freezing-point, and the accompanying thaw was most unpleasant.
Stillwell's party had pitched their tent about ten paces to the leeward side of ours, of which stratagem they continually reminded us. Going outside for food to supply our two small meals per day was an operation fraught with much discomfort to all. This is what used to happen. The man on whom the duty fell had to insinuate himself into a bundle of wet burberrys, and, as soon as he was outside, they froze stiff. When, after a while, he signified his intention of coming in, the other two would collect everything to one end of the tent and roll up the floor-cloth. Plastered with snow, he entered, and, despite every precaution, in removing burberrys and brushing himself he would scatter snow about and increase the general wetness. On these excursions we would visit Stillwell's tent and be hospitably, if somewhat gingerly, admitted; the inmates drawing back and pulling away their sleeping-bags as from one with a fell disease. As a supporting party they were good company, among other things, supplying us with tobacco ad libitum. When we parted, five days after, we missed them very much.
During the night the wind blew harder than ever—that terrible wind, laden with snow, that blows for ever across the vast, mysterious plateau, the "wind that shrills all night in a waste land, where no one comes or hath come since the making of the world." In the early hours of the morning it reached eighty miles per hour.
Not till 9 next morning did the sky clear and the drift diminish. Considering that it had taken us eight days to do thirteen miles, we decided to move on the 16th at any cost.
Our library consisted of 'An Anthology of Australian Verse', Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair' and 'Hints to Travellers' in two volumes. McLean spent much of the time reading the Anthology and I started 'Vanity Fair'. The latter beguiled many weary hours in that tent during the journey. I read a good deal aloud and McLean read it afterwards. Correll used to pass the days of confinement arranging rations and costs for cycling tours and designing wonderful stoves and cooking utensils, all on the sledging, "cut down weight" principle.
On the 16th we were off at 9 A.M. with a blue sky above and a "beam" wind of thirty-five miles per hour. Up a gentle slope over small sastrugi the going was heavy. We went back to help Stillwell's party occasionally, as we were moving a little faster.
Just after lunch I saw a small black spot on the horizon to the south. Was it a man? How could Dr. Mawson have got there? We stopped and saw that Stillwell had noticed it too. Field-glasses showed it to be a man approaching, about one and a half miles away. We left our sledges in a body to meet him, imagining all kinds of wonderful things such as the possibility of it being a member of Wild's party—we did not know where Wild had been landed. All the theories vanished when the figure assumed the well-known form of Dr. Mawson. He had made a little more south than we, and his sledges were just out of sight, about two miles away.
Soon Mertz and Ninnis came into view with a dog-team, which was harnessed on to one sledge. All hands pulled the other sledge, and we came up fifteen minutes later with Dr. Mawson's camp at eighteen and a quarter miles. In the good Australian way we sat round a large pot of tea and after several cups put up our two tents.
It was a happy evening with the three tents grouped together and the dogs securely picketed on the great plateau, forming the only spot on the limitless plain. Every one was excited at the prospect of the weeks ahead; the mystery and charm of the "unknown" had taken a strange hold on us.
Ninnis and Mertz came into our tent for a short talk before turning in. Mertz sang the old German student song:
We were nearly all University graduates. We knew that this would be our last evening together till all were safely back at the Hut. No thought was farther from our minds than that it was the last evening we would ever spend with two companions, who had been our dear comrades for just a year.
Before turning into sleeping-bags, a messenger brought me dispatches from the general's tent—a letter on the plateau. This proved to be the instructions to the Eastern Coastal Party. Arriving back at the Hut by January 15, we were to ascertain as much as possible of the coast lying east of the Mertz Glacier, investigating its broad features and carrying out the following scientific work: magnetic, biological and geological observations, the character, especially the nature and size of the grains of ice or snow surfaces, details of sastrugi, topographical features, heights and distances, and meteorology.
On Sunday, November 17, we moved on together to the east with the wind at fifteen miles an hour, the temperature being 9 degrees F. The sun shone strongly soon after the start, and with four miles to our credit a tent was run up at 1 P.M., and all lunched together on tea, biscuit, butter and chocolate. Up to this time we had had only three al fresco lunches, but, as the weather seemed to be much milder and the benefit of tea and a rest by the way were so great, we decided to use the tent in future, and did so throughout the journey.
In the afternoon, Dr. Mawson's party forged ahead, the dogs romping along on a downhill grade. We took the bit in our teeth as we saw them sitting on their sledges, growing smaller and smaller in front of us. We came up with them again as they had waited to exchange a few more words at a point on the track where a long extent of coast to the east came into view.
Here we bade a final adieu to Dr. Mawson, Mertz and Ninnis. The surface was on the down grade towards the east, and with a cheer and farewell wave they started off, Mertz walking rapidly ahead, followed by Ninnis and Dr. Mawson with their sledges and teams. They were soon lost to view behind the rolling undulations.
A mile farther on we pitched camp at 8 P.M. in a slight depression just out of sight of the sea. Every one slept soundly after a good day's pulling.
November 18 was a bright dazzling day, the sky dotted with fleecy alto-cumulus. At 6 A.M. we were out to find Stillwell's party moving in their tent. There was a rush for shovels to fill the cookers with snow and a race to boil hoosh.
At this camp we tallied up the provisions, with the intention of taking what we might require from Stillwell and proceeding independently of him, as he was likely to leave us any day. There were fifty-nine days to go until January 15, 1913, the latest date of arrival back at the Hut, for which eight weeks' rations were considered to be sufficient. There were seven weeks' food on the sledge, so Stillwell handed over another fifty-pound bag as well as an odd five pounds of wholemeal biscuit. The total amount of kerosene was five gallons, with a bottle of methylated spirit.
Shortly after eight o'clock we caught sight of Dr. Mawson's camp, and set sail to make up the interval. This we did literally as there was a light westerly breeze—the only west wind we encountered during the whole journey.
The sledge was provided with a bamboo mast, seven feet high, stepped behind the cooker-box and stayed fore and aft with wire. The yard was a bamboo of six feet, slung from the top of the mast, its height being varied by altering the length of the slings. The bamboo was threaded through canvas leads in the floor-cloth which provided a spread of thirty square feet of sail. It was often such an ample area that it had to be reefed from below.
With the grade sloping gently down and the wind freshening, the pace became so hot that the sledge often overran us. A spurious "Epic of the East" (see 'Adelie Blizzard') records it:
We rapidly neared Dr. Mawson's camp, but when we were within a few miles of it, the other party started in a south-easterly direction and were soon lost to sight. Our course was due east.
At thirty-three and a half miles the sea was in sight, some fine flat-topped bergs floating in the nearest bay. Suddenly a dark, rocky nunatak sprang into view on our left. It was a sudden contrast after ten days of unchanging whiteness, and we felt very anxious to visit this new find. As it was in Stillwell's limited territory we left it to him.
According to the rhymester it was:
After leaving Aladdin's Cave, our sledge-meter had worked quite satisfactorily. Just before noon, the casting attaching the recording-dial to the forks broke—the first of a series of break-downs. Correll bound it up with copper wire and splints borrowed from the medical outfit.
The wind died away and the sail was of little use. In addition to this, we met with a slight up grade on the eastern side of the depression, our rate diminishing accordingly. At 7 P.M. the tent was pitched in dead calm, after a day's run of fifteen miles with a full load of almost eight hundred pounds—a record which remained unbroken with us till near the end of the outward journey. Looking back, the nunatak and bergs were still visible.
Both parties were under way at 8 A.M. next day (November 19) on a calm and sunny morning. The course by sun-compass was set due east.
At noon I took a latitude "shot" with the three-inch Cary theodolite. This little instrument proved very satisfactory and was easily handled in the cold. In latitude 67 degrees 15' south, forty-six and a half miles east of the Hut, we were once more on level country with a high rise to the north-east and another shallow gully in front.
A fog which had been moving along the sea-front in an opaque wall drifted over the land and enveloped us. Beautiful crystals of ice in the form of rosettes and small fern-fronds were deposited on the cordage of the sail and mast. One moment the mists would clear, and the next, we could not see more than a few hundred yards.
We now parted with Stillwell, Hodgeman and Close, who turned off to a rising knoll—Mount Hunt—visible in the north-east, and disappeared in the fog.
After the halt at noon the sastrugi became much larger and softer. The fog cleared at 2 P.M. and the sun came out and shone very fiercely. A very inquisitive skua gull—the first sign of life we had seen thus far—flew around the tent and settled on the snow near by. In the calm, the heat was excessive and great thirst attacked us all the afternoon, which I attempted to assuage at every halt by holding snow in my hands and licking the drops of water off my knuckles—a cold and unsatisfactory expedient. We travelled without burberrys—at that time quite a novel sensation—wearing only fleece suits and light woollen undergarments. Correll pulled for the greater part of the afternoon in underclothing alone.
At forty-nine and a half miles a new and wonderful panorama opened before us. The sea lay just below, sweeping as a narrow gulf into the great, flat plain of debouching glacier-tongue which ebbed away north into the foggy horizon. A small ice-capped island was set like a pearl in the amethyst water. To the east, the glacier seemed to fuse with the blue line of the hinterland. Southward, the snowy slope rose quickly, and the far distance was unseen.
We marched for three-quarters of a mile to where a steep down grade commenced. Here I made a sketch and took a round of angles to all prominent features, and the conspicuous, jutting, seaward points of the glacier. McLean and Correll were busy making a snow cairn, six feet high, to serve as a back-sight for angles to be taken at a higher eminence southward.
We set out for the latter, and after going one and a half miles it was late enough to camp. During the day we had all got very sunburnt, and our faces were flushed and smarting painfully. After the long winter at the Hut the skin had become more delicate than usual.
Under a clear sky, the wind came down during the night at forty-five miles per hour, lashing surface drift against the walls of the tent. It was not till ten o'clock that the sledge started, breaking a heavy trail in snow which became more and more like brittle piecrust. There was at first a slight descent, and then we strained up the eminence to the south over high sastrugi running almost north and south. Capsizes became frequent, and to extricate the heavy sledge from some of the deep furrows it was necessary to unload the food-bags. The drift running over the ground was troublesome when we sat down for a rest, but, in marching, our heads were just clear of it.
It was a long laborious day, and the four miles indicated by the inexorable sledge-meter seemed a miserable result. However, near the top of the hill there was a rich reward. A small nunatak slanted like a steel-blue shadow on the side of a white peak to the south-west. There was great excitement, and the sledge slid along its tracks with new life. It was rock without a doubt, and there was no one to dispute it with us. While speculating wildly as to its distance, we came unexpectedly to the summit of the hill.
The wind had subsided, the sky was clear and the sun stood low in the south-west. Our view had widened to a noble outlook. The sea, a delicate turquoise-blue, lay in the foreground of the low, white, northern ice-cliffs. Away to the east was the dim suggestion of land across the bed of the glacier, about which circled the southerly highlands of the plateau, buried at times in the haze of distance. Due south, twenty miles away, projecting from the glacier, was another island of rock. The nunatak first seen, not many miles to the south-west, was a snowy mountain streaked with sprouting rock, rising solitary in an indentation of the land. We honoured our Ship by calling it Aurora Peak, while our camp stood on what was thenceforth to be Mount Murchison.
It was obvious that this was the place for our first depot. I had decided, too, to make it the first magnetic station and the point from which to visit and explore Aurora Peak. None of us made any demur over a short halt. Correll had strained his back during the day from pulling too hard, and was troubled with a bleeding nose. My face was very sore from sunburn, with one eye swollen and almost closed, and McLean's eyes had not yet recovered from their first attack of snow-blindness.
November 21 was a day in camp. Most of the morning I spent trying, with Correll's help, to get the declination needle to set. Its pivot had been destroyed in transit and Correll had replaced it by a gramophone needle, which was found too insensitive. There was nothing to do but use the three-inch theodolite, which, setting to one degree, would give a good result, with a mean of thirty-two settings, for a region with such variable magnetic declination. A latitude "shot" was made at noon, and in the afternoon I took a set of dip determinations. These, with a panoramic sketch from the camp, a round of angles to conspicuous points and an observation at 5.30 P.M. for time and azimuth completed the day's work. Correll did the recording.
Meanwhile, McLean had built an eight-feet snow mound, erected a depot flag upon it and taken several photographs.
The next day was devoted to an excursion to Aurora Peak. The weather was, to our surprise, quite clear and calm. Armed with the paraphernalia for a day's tour, we set off down the slope. Correll put the primus stove and the inner pot of the cooker in the ready food-bag, McLean slung on his camera and the aneroid barometer, while I took my ruck-sack with the rations, as well as field-glasses and an ice-axe. In case of crevasses, we attached ourselves to an alpine rope in long procession. According to the "Epic" it was something like this: