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:
Crowd on the sail-
Let her speed full and free "on the run"
Over knife-edge and glaze, marble polish and pulverized chalk
The finnesko glide in the race, and there's no time for talk.
Up hill, down dale,
It's all in the game and the fun.
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:
A rock by the way-
A spot in the circle of white-
A grey, craggy spur plunging stark through the deep-splintered ice.
A trifle! you say, but a glow of warm land may suffice
To brighten a day
Prolonged to a midsummer night.
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.