FIRST VOICE. No they're not.
SLEEPY VOICE. Saw them there yesterday, must be somewhere in the tent.
FIRST VOICE. No they're not... I ate them last night.
** Until amounts were known by experience, rations were weighed by a
small balance whose various weights were small calico bags filled with
chocolate.
The exercise, a good hoosh and above all the clear sky made us take a less morbid view of the fact that we were six days out from the Hut and only nineteen and a half miles away.
Early on the 16th we could hear above the roar of the wind the drift still hissing against the tent, but it had diminished by nine o'clock breakfast.
By common consent it was agreed that our loads were too heavy for the conditions under which we were working. I accordingly decided to drop one hundred-pound bag. We had already saved nearly one week's food for three men and had not yet worked up our full sledging appetites. The bag was raised to the top of a six-foot snow mound, a thermograph being placed alongside. As we now seemed to be on plateau snow, I thought it wise to leave behind my heavy boots and Swiss crampons.
By 4 P.M. the wind had decreased to a light breeze. Work was very slow on a steeper up grade, and at six o'clock clouds came up quickly from the south-east and snow began to fall, so we camped at 7.30 P.M. thoroughly tired out. At twenty-four and a half miles the altitude was three thousand two hundred feet.
The snow was a false alarm. It ceased at 9 P.M. and the wind subsided to a dead calm!!
Good headway was being made against a strong breeze next day, when it was noticed that two gallons of kerosene were missing off the supporters' sledge. While Murphy and Laseron went back two miles to recover them, Webb secured a magnetic declination and I took sun observations for time and azimuth.