I902] AN ALARMING EVENING 241 



heavy drift, but I was not informed of the absence of the men 

 till eight o'clock, some hours after their messmates had begun 

 to grow anxious. We immediately organised two search parties, 

 and having made elaborate plans and fully dressed ourselves 

 to face the elements, we stepped forth— to meet the absentees 

 returning over the gangway. It appears they had an idea that 

 our peninsula was an island, and started to walk round it. 

 Not finding the other end, they got farther from the ship than 

 they had intended, and then the drift coming on, they had to 

 feel their way along the land to get back, and so reached the 

 ship in a very exhausted and frost-bitten condition. There 

 must be no more of this casual wandering about.' 



^ May J 9. — Still the never-ceasing easterly wind; the 

 barometer has risen very high, but, high or low, the wind 

 persists, lulling and rising, and again lulling and rising, till one 

 grows heartily sick of it.' 



^ May 21. — . . . Wind from the eastward, increasing 

 during the day to a howling gale between five and nine. It 

 is curious how clearly I can hear the wind in my bunk at night. 

 Each gust is distinct as it shrieks through the rigging, and it 

 is not inspiriting to lay awake and think to this weird and 

 rather dismal accompaniment ; one begins to wonder whether 

 it ever will be calm again. On the other hand, as the sound 

 is precisely that of a storm at sea, one cannot but take great 

 comfort in reflecting how infinitely pleasanter it is to listen to 

 it under such restful conditions rather than when tossed about 

 on the mountainous seas of the Southern Oceans. Overhead 

 to-day it is calm and bright, with peculiar luminous cirro-stratus 

 cloud towards the south, but for some feet from the surface 

 the air is thick with driving snow. How used we are getting 

 to the sound of this driving snow ! I seem to have heard the 

 same as the dust was swept along a hard, sandy road ; it is 

 almost like the patter of hail ; to all intents and purposes our 

 snow is fine sand.' 



^ May 22. — A day of hard wind, ending in a beautifully 

 fine calm moonlight night. We all went out in the evening, 

 and in the clear silvery light were able to see about us for the 



VOL. I. R 



