The day's march was completed at 10.30 A.M. and fourteen and a half miles lay behind.
"We were up again at 11.20 P.M. Sky clear; fifteen-mile breeze from the south-south-east and the temperature 3 degrees F. By midnight there was a thirty-mile wind and low, flying drift.
"December 21.—The night-march was a miserable one. The only thing which helped to relieve it was that for a moment Dixson Island was miraged up in the north, and we felt that we had met an old friend, which means a lot in this icy desolation. The surface was furrowed by hard, sharp sastrugi.
"We camped at 9 A.M. after only eleven miles. Haldane was finished off before we retired.
"We were up again at 9 P.M., and when a start was made at 11 P.M. there was a strong south-south-east wind blowing, with low drift; temperature, zero Fahr.
"December 22.—The surface of hard, polished sastrugi caused many falls. The track was undulating, rising in one case several hundred feet and finally falling in a long slope.
"Pavlova gave in late in the march and was taken on the sledge.
"Camped at 6.40 A.M. in a forty-mile wind with low drift. Distance marched was twelve miles one thousand four hundred yards.
"Before turning in, we effected sundry repairs. Mertz re-spliced the handle of the shovel which had broken apart and I riveted the broken spindle of the sledge-meter. The mechanism of the latter had frozen during the previous day's halt, and, on being started, its spindle had broken off short. It was a long and tedious job tapping at the steed with a toy hammer, but the rivet held miraculously for the rest of the journey.
"Up at 11.30 P.M., a moderate breeze blowing, overcast sky, light snow falling."