By January 2 we had thrown Penguin Point five miles behind, and a spell of unsettled weather commenced; in front lay a stretch of fourteen miles over a good surface. The wind was behind us, blowing between thirty and forty miles per hour, and from an overcast sky light snow was falling. Fortunately there were fleeting glimpses of the sun, by which the course could be adjusted. Towards evening the snow had thickened, but thanks to the splendid assistance afforded by a sail, the white jutting spurs of the edge of Mertz Glacier were dimly visible.
A blizzard took possession of the next day till 7 P.M., when we all sallied out and found the identical gully in which was the one-hundred-mile camp of the outward journey. The light was still bad and the sky overcast, so the start was postponed till next morning.
There was food for five days on a slightly reduced ration and the depot on Mount Murchison was forty miles away.
Once we had left the sea-ice and stood on the glacier, Aurora Peak with its black crest showed through the glasses. Once there, the crevasses we most dreaded would be over and the depot easily found.
A good fourteen and a quarter miles slipped by on January 4—a fine day. On January 5 the "plot began to thicken." The clouds hung above like a blanket, sprinkling light snow. The light was atrocious, and a few open rents gave warning of the western zone of pitfalls. All the while there was a shifting spectral chaos of whiteness which seemed to benumb the faculties and destroy one's sense of reality. We decided to wait for a change in the weather.
During the night the snow ceased, and by lunch time on the 6th the sledge-meter recorded ten miles. The strange thing was that the firm sastrugi present on the outward journey were now covered inches in snow, which became deeper as we marched westward.
It was now a frequent occurrence for one of us to pitch forward with his feet down a hidden crevasse, sometimes going through to the waist. The travelling was most nerve-racking. When a foot went through the crust of snow, it was impossible to tell on which side of the crevasse one happened to be, or in what direction it ran. The only thing to do was to go ahead and trust in Providence.
At last we landed the sledge on a narrow ridge of hard snow, surrounded by blue, gaping pits in a pallid eternity of white. It was only when the tent was pitched that a wide quarry was noticed a few yards away from the door.
It was now fourteen miles to the top of Mount Murchison and we had only two more days' rations and one and a half pounds of penguin-meat.
On January 7th the light was worse than ever and snow fell. It was only six miles across the broken country between us and the gully between Mt. Murchison and Aurora Peak, where one could travel with some surety. A sharp look-out was kept, and towards 11 P.M. a rim of clear sky overtopped the southern horizon. We knew the sun would curve round into it at midnight, so all was made ready for marching.