We soon had the cave clear of snow, had a good meal and then slept the sleep of the just, feeling well content with the first day's work—eleven and a half miles from home at an altitude of one thousand nine hundred feet. We were off at last on a search for the Magnetic Pole.
On the morrow some time was spent in rearranging the loads. Finally, both parties moved off south into heavy wind and fairly thick drift. What with the ground rising steadily, the pressure of the wind and our lack of condition, two and a quarter hours of solid work realized only two and a quarter miles; so we decided to camp.
All the night it blew hard, between seventy and eighty miles per hour, and next day it was still blowing and drifting heavily. Our tent was a good deal smaller than Murphy's, and, as Webb and Hurley are both six-footers, we always had to put all gear outside when the sleeping-bags were down. This is really a good thing when the weather is bad, as one is not tempted to stay in the bag all the time.
Early in the afternoon as we were all feeling hungry and had been in bags long enough to feel cold, although the weather was quite warm (10 degrees F.), we rolled bags, and, when our frozen burberrys were once fairly on, quite enjoyed ourselves. After a boil-up and a few minutes' "run" round in the drift and wind, we did some stitching on our light drill tent, which was making very heavy weather of it, although pitched close under the lee of Murphy's strong japara tent. A little reading, some shouted unintelligible conversation with the other tent, another boil-up, and, last but not least, a smoke, found us quite ready for another sleep.
Next day (November 13), the wind having dropped to thirty-five miles per hour, we set out about 11 A.M. in light drift. The sky was still overcast, so the light was very trying. In the worst fogs at home one can at any rate see something of the ground on which one is treading; in Adelie Land, even when the air was clear of snow, it was easy to bump against a four-foot sastruga without seeing it. It always reminded me most of a fog at sea: a ship creeping "o'er the hueless, viewless deep."
When 6 P.M. arrived we had only covered five and a half miles, but were all thoroughly exhausted and glad to camp. Lunch had been rather barbarously served in the lee of the sledge. First came plasmon biscuit, broken with the ice-axe into pieces small enough to go into the mouth through the funnel of a burberry helmet; then followed two ounces of chocolate, frozen rather too hard to have a definite taste; and finally a luscious morsel—two ounces of butter, lovingly thawed-out in the mouth to get the full flavour. Lunches like these in wind and drift are uncomfortable enough for every one to be eager to start again as soon as possible.
By nine o'clock that night the wind had increased to a full gale. We were in camp all the 14th and the 15th, the wind rising to eighty-five miles per hour with very heavy drift during the small hours of the 15th. This was its maximum, and by the afternoon it was down to about seventy miles per hour with a clear sky and light drift. We donned our burberrys (I should like to give Hurley's "Ode to a Frozen Burberry") and dug out our sledges, both of which were completely buried in a ramp forty yards long; the shovel projecting nine inches above the surface.
While we were engaged on this work, I overheard the following conversation being shouted in the Supporting Party's tent:
FIRST VOICE. I'm hungry. Who will go out and get the food-bag?
SLEEPY VOICE. The food-weights ** are in the cooker.