It appeared, then, that the only thing to do was to include Harrisson in the party, so that we could have his sledge. This would facilitate our progress considerably, but against that was the fact that Moyes would be left alone at the Base under the belief that Harrisson had perished.
A gale was blowing on the 7th, but as we were partly under the lee of the Hippo, it was only felt in gusts. A visit was made to the Nunatak; Harrisson to examine the birds, Watson for geology and photography, while I climbed to the summit with the field-glasses to look for the missing sledge. Kennedy remained at the camp to take a series of magnetic observations.
There were hundreds of snow petrels pairing off, but no eggs were seen in any of the nest-crevices. They were so tame that it was quite easy to catch them, but they had a habit of ejecting their partially digested food, a yellow oily mess, straight at one. This was the stuff we had thought was egg-yolk on Amundsen's head the previous night.
Upon returning to camp, the search for the sledge was continued. After prospecting with a spade in possible snow-drifts and crevasse-lids, we walked out fanwise, in the direction of the prevailing wind, but with no result. I decided, therefore, to take Harrisson with me. I was extremely sorry for Moyes, but it could not be helped.
On the way back towards the land to the south, we found that the surface had improved in the morning's gale. Camp was finally pitched on a slope close to the high land.
The coast, from the Base to this spot—Delay Point—runs almost due east and west and with no deep indentations except the Bay of Winds. To the west, the slope from the inland plateau is fairly gradual and therefore not badly broken, but still farther west it is much steeper, coming down from two thousand feet in a very short distance, over tumbling ice-fields and frozen cascades. Several outcrops of dark rock lay to the east, one of them only two miles away.
The wind-velocity fluctuated between sixty and eighty miles per hour, keeping us securely penned. Harrisson and Kennedy, after battling their way to our tent for a meal, used the second primus and cooker, brought for Harrisson, in their own tent. All we could do was to smoke and listen to the fierce squalls and lashing drift. I had brought nothing to read on the trip, making up the weight in tobacco. Watson had Palgrave's 'Golden Lyrics', Kennedy, an engineer's hand-book, and Harrisson, a portion of the 'Reign of Mary Tudor'. There was a tiny pack of patience cards, but they were in the instrument-box on the sledge and none of us cared to face the gale to get them.
The wind, on the 10th, saw fit to moderate to half a gale; the drift creeping low and thick over the ground; the land visible above it. Donning burberrys, we made an excursion to the rocks ahead. Two miles and a climb of six hundred feet were rather exhausting in the strong wind. There were about eighty acres of rock exposed on the edge of the ice-cap, mainly composed of mica schists and some granite; the whole extensively weathered. A line of moraine ran from the rocks away in an east-north-east direction.
Most of the next day was broken by a heavy gale and, since the prospect ahead was nothing but bare, rough ice, we passed the day in making everything ready for a start and repaired a torn tent. The rent was made by Amundsen, who dragged up the ice-axe to which he was tethered and, in running round the tent, drove the point of the axe through it, narrowly missing Kennedy's head inside.
Tuesday November 12 was an interesting day. The greater part of the track was over rippled, level ice, thrown into many billows, through devious pressure-hummocks and between the inevitable crevasses. The coast was a kaleidoscope of sable rocks, blue cascades, and fissured ice-falls. Fifteen miles ahead stood an island twenty miles long, rising in bare peaks and dark knolls. This was eventually named David Island.