Wild attended to the repair of the sledges and equipment, and also assisted me in the geological observations and the collection of specimens. My other work was to keep the courses and distances, and to work out observations and lay down our directions.

I kept two diaries, one my observation book, and the other a narrative diary. But although all of us kept diaries we were more often than I care to remember too spent and cold at night to pay much attention to them.

CHAPTER XXXII
THE RETURN OF THE "NIMROD"

During the winter the Nimrod had been laid up in Port Lyttelton, and had been thoroughly overhauled so that she should once more be ready to battle with the ice. Captain F. P. Evans had been appointed master of the ship under my power of attorney, Captain England having resigned on account of ill-health, and towards the end of the year sufficient stores were taken on board to provide for a party staying at Cape Royds through the winter, in case one of the sledging-parties had not returned, and also to provide for the ship if she herself was frozen up.

The Nimrod left Lyttelton again on December 1, 1908, and enjoyed fine weather for the voyage southwards, the experience of Captain Evans on this voyage going to show that, under normal conditions, the pack that stretches out from the Barrier to the eastward of the Ross Sea is impenetrable, and that the Discovery was able to push to within sight of King Edward VII Land in 1902 because the ice was unusually open during that season. Twenty-eight miles from Cape Royds fast ice was encountered, and as there seemed to be no immediate possibility of the ship being able to proceed, Captain Evans decided to send Mackintosh with three men to convey a mail-bag to the winter quarters. No very great difficulties were anticipated for this expedition, but as it turned out, not only difficulties but also dangers and almost death were to be met with.

On January 3 Mackintosh set out with McGillan, Riches and Paton, but in the afternoon Riches and Paton returned to the ship and Mackintosh and McGillan proceeded alone.

On the second day their way was blocked by open water with pressure ice floating past, and although they walked for two hours in a westerly direction to see how far the water reached, they did not get to the end of it. The whole of the ice to the southward seemed to be moving, and as the open water seemed to take away any possibility of reaching Cape Royds, they started back to the ship.

Presently Mackintosh discovered that there was also open water ahead of them, blocking the way to the ship, and a survey of the position revealed the unpleasant fact that the floe-ice was breaking up altogether, and that they were in serious danger of drifting out into the Sound. Safety lay only in a hurried dash for the shore to the east, and every two hundred yards or so they had to drag their sledge to the edge of a floe, jump over a lane of water, and then with a big effort pull the sledge after them.

After an hour of this work their hands were cut and bleeding, and their clothes were frozen as stiff as boards, for they had frequently slipped and fallen when crossing from floe to floe. At last, however, they approached the land, and came to a piece of glacier ice that formed a bridge. The floe that they were on was moving rapidly, so they had to make a great effort and drag the sledge over a six-foot breach. They succeeded in doing this and were in a safe position again, but had they been fifteen minutes later they would have been lost, for by that time there was open water where they had gained the land.

Near this spot they decided to camp, and McGillan was almost at once so badly attacked by snow-blindness that his face was badly swollen and his eyes tightly closed. So bad indeed was McGillan that, until Mackintosh could bear the pain no longer in silence, he did not know that his companion was suffering from the same complaint as himself.