We started away on the main eastern journey with a spurt of eleven miles on a calm and cloudless day, intending to follow our former track over the shelf-ice to the Hippo Nunatak. The surface varied; soft patches putting a steady brake on the ardour of the first, fresh hours of marching.
In the afternoon, it was only necessary to wear a shirt, singlet, heavy pyjama trousers, finnesko and socks, and even then one perspired freely. The temperature stood at 17 degrees F. The dogs pulled their load well, requiring help only over loose snow.
The evening of Friday November 1, 1912, saw us past Masson Island and about ten miles from the mainland. All day there had been a chill easterly breeze, the temperature being well below zero. The sky was hazy with cirro-stratus and a fine halo "ringed" the sun.
Looking out from the tent in the morning we saw that the clouds were dense and lowering, but the breezes were light and variable until 5 P.M., when an east-north-east wind arose, bringing snow in its train. Travelling through foggy drift, we could just ascertain that the Bay of Winds had opened up on the right. The day's march was a good one of sixteen miles thirty-five yards.
The Bay of Winds did not belie its name. Throughout November 3 the wind veered about in gusts and after lunch settled down to a hard south-easter.
We had made a good start; more than sixty-two miles in a little over four days. The camp was half-way across the Bay of Winds, with the Alligator Nunatak six miles off on the "starboard bow" and the Rock of the Avalanches seventeen miles straight ahead. Passing glimpses were caught of the Hippo twenty-four miles distant.
On November 5, after a day's blizzard, there was much accumulated snow to shovel away from tents and sledges. Finding the hauling very arduous, we headed in for the land to find a better surface, passing the Alligator Nunatak close on its southern side.
At noon on the 6th, the sledges were running parallel to the Rock of the Avalanches, three miles away, and soon afterwards we came to a large boulder; one of four in a line from the rock-cliffs, from which they had been evidently transported, as they were composed of the same gneiss.
The Hippo was close at hand at four o'clock and, on nearing the shattered ice about the depot, we released the dogs and pulled the sledge ourselves. On being freed, they galloped over to the rock and were absent for over an hour. When they returned, Amundsen's head was daubed with egg-yolk, as we thought. This was most probable as scores of snow petrels were flying about the rocks.
A nasty shock was awaiting us at the depot. The sledge, which had been left on end, two feet buried in hard snow and with a mound six feet high built round it, had been blown completely away. The stays, secured to foodbags, were both broken; one food-bag weighing sixty-eight pounds having been lifted ten feet. This was a very serious loss as the total load to be carried now amounted to one thousand one hundred and eighty pounds, which was too great a weight to be supported by one sledge.