In the morning the wind was doing thirty miles per hour, which certainly seemed to be the normal thing. It fell to a nice sailing breeze, but, at the time, we were not very appreciative of anything as the course was uphill. Again, it was to be the last day's run, so we were "all out" when the halt came after a good fifteen miles—the longest day's march on the outward journey. Nevertheless, Webb unpacked the theodolite after hoosh and took an altitude of the sun at midnight.
On December 21 the load on the sledge was stripped down to tent, dip-circle, theodolite, cooker and a little food. For two and a half miles we went south-east over rising ground until the sledge-meter showed three hundred and one miles.
While Hurley and I pitched the tent, Webb built a breakwind for his instrument fifty yards away. Then followed a long set of magnetic observations. About 5 P.M. the magnetic work was interrupted; the theodolite replacing the dip-circle on the legs, while I took a longitude shot. I was seeing double, being slightly snow-blind, and had some difficulty in choosing the correct combination from the assortment of suns and cross-wires visible in the telescope. Setting the vertical and horizontal wires simultaneously on the sun was beyond me; Webb taking the observations for the true meridian, which also checked my longitude shot.
Magnetic work under these conditions is an extremely uncomfortable operation. Even a light wind will eddy round the break-wind, and it is wind which makes low temperatures formidable. Nearly all the work has to be done with bare fingers or thin instrument-gloves, and the time taken is far greater than in temperate climates, owing to the fingers constantly "going" and because of the necessity of continually freeing the instrument from the condensed moisture of the breath. Considering that the temperature was -12 degrees F. when he had finished his four hours' work, it may be imagined that Webb was ready for his hot tea. The dip proved to be 89 degrees 43.5', that is, sixteen and a half minutes from the vertical. The altitude was just over five thousand nine hundred feet, in latitude 70 degrees 36.5' south and longitude 148 degrees 10' east.
After lunch the Union Jack and the Commonwealth Ensign were hoisted and three cheers given for the King—willing but rather lonesome away out there! We searched the horizon with glasses but could see nothing save snow, undulating in endless sastrugi. To the south-east the horizon was limited by our old enemy, "the next ridge," some two miles away. We wondered what could be beyond, although we knew it was only the same featureless repetition, since one hundred and seventy-five miles on the same course would bring us to the spot where David, Mawson and Mackay had stood in 1909.
After Hurley had taken a photograph of the camp, the tent was struck and the sledge repacked. At last the sail was rigged, we gave a final glance back and turned on the homeward trail.
My diary of that night sums up: "We have now been exactly six weeks on the tramp and somehow feel rather sad at turning back, even though it has not been quite a Sunday school picnic all along. It is a great disappointment not to see a dip of 90°, but the time is too short with this 'climate.' It was higher than we expected to get, after the unsatisfactory dips obtained near the two-hundred-mile depot. The rate of increase since that spot has been fairly uniform and indicates that 90 degrees might be reached in another fifty to sixty miles, if the same rate held, and that means at least another week. It's no good thinking about it for 'orders are orders.' We'll have our work cut out to get back as it is. Twenty-five days till we are overdue. Certainly we have twenty-three days' food, eight days' with us, ten days' at two hundred miles, and five days' at sixty-seven miles, so with luck we should not go hungry, but Webb wants to get five more full sets of dips if possible on the way back, and this means two and a half days."
That night the minimum thermometer registered its lowest at -25 degrees F. It was December 21 and Midsummer Day, so we concluded that the spot would be a very chilly one in the winter.
At this juncture we were very short of finnesko. The new ones we had worn since the two-hundred-mile camp had moulted badly and were now almost "bald." The stitching wears through as soon as the hair comes off and frequent mending is necessary.
We rose earlier than usual on the 22nd, so as to get more advantage from the wind, which each evening had always tended to die down somewhat. With forty-two square feet of sail, the twenty-mile wind was too much for us, the sledge capsizing on the smallest pretext. Instead of hanging the yard from the top of the mast, we placed it across the load, reversing the sail and hooking the clews over the top of the mast. Three or four pieces of lampwick at intervals served as reefing-points by which the area of the sail could be quickly cut down by bunching the upper part as much as was necessary.