A blizzard of three days' duration kept us in camp between August 27 and 30. Jones, Moyes and I had a three-man sleeping-bag, and the temperature being high, 11 degrees to 15 degrees F., we were very warm, but thoroughly tired of lying down for so long. Harrisson, Dovers and Watson had single bags and therefore less room in the other tent.
The last day of August was beautifully bright: temperature -12 degrees to -15 degrees F. We passed Henderson Island in the forenoon, and, hauling up a rise to the south of it, had a good view of the surroundings. On the right, the land ran back to form a large bay, seventeen miles wide. This was later named the Bay of Winds, as a "blow" was always encountered while crossing it.
In the centre of the bay was a nunatak, which from its shape at once received the name of the Alligator. In front, apparently fifteen miles off, was another nunatak, the Hippo, and four definite outcrops—Delay Point and Avalanche Rocks—could be seen along the mainland. The sight of this bare rock was very pleasing, as we had begun to think we were going to find nothing but ice-sheathed land. Dovers took a round of angles to all the prominent points.
The Hippo was twenty-two miles away, so deceptive is distance in these latitudes; and in one and a half days, over very heavy sastrugi, we were in its vicinity. The sledges could not be brought very near the rock as it was surrounded by massive ridges of pressure-ice.
We climbed to the top of the nunatak which was four hundred and twenty feet high, four hundred yards long and two hundred yards wide. It was composed of gneissic granite and schists. Dovers took angles from an eminence, Watson collected geological specimens and Harrisson sketched until his fingers were frost-bitten. Moss and lichens were found and a dead snow petrel—a young one—showing that the birds must breed in the vicinity.
To the south, the glacier shelf appeared to be very little broken, but to the north it was terribly torn and twisted. At each end of the nunatak there was a very fine bergschrund.** Twenty miles to the east there appeared to be an uncovered rocky islet; the mainland turning to the southward twelve miles away. During the night the minimum thermometer registered -47 degrees F.
** The term not used in the usual sense. Referring to a wide,
imposing crevasse caused by the division of the ice as it presses past
the nunatak.—ED.
An attempt to get away next morning was frustrated by a strong gale. We were two hundred yards from the shelter of the Hippo and were forced to turn back, since it was difficult to keep one's feet, while the sledges were blown sideways over the neve surface.
I resolved to leave the depot in this place and return to the Base, for our sleeping-bags were getting very wet and none of the party were having sufficient sleep. We were eighty-four miles from the hut; I had hoped to do one hundred miles, but we could make up for that by starting the summer journey a few days earlier. One sledge was left here as well as six weeks' allowance of food for three men, except tea, of which there was sufficient for fifty days, seventy days oil and seventy-eight days' biscuit. The sledge was placed on end in a hole three feet deep and a mound built up around it, six feet high; a bamboo and flag being lashed to the top.
On September 4 we were homeward bound, heading first to the mainland leaving Delay Point on our left, to examine some of the outcrops of rock. Reaching the coast about 3 P.M., camp was shortly afterwards pitched in a most beautiful spot. A wall of solid rock rose sheer for over four hundred feet and was crowned by an ice-cap half the thickness. Grand ice-falls surged down on either side.