74 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Jan. 



difficult. Light, ragged clouds were drifting across the face 

 of the sun, and through the theodolite telescope at one 

 moment one saw its blurred, indistinguishable image, and at 

 the next was blinded with the full force of its rays. After 

 getting the best result that I could, I casually lowered the 

 telescope and swept it round the horizon ; suddenly a speck 

 seemed to flash by, and a wild hope sprang up. Slowly 

 I brought the telescope back ; yes, there it was again ; yes, 

 and on either side of it two smaller specks — the depot, without 

 the shadow of a doubt. I sprang up and shouted, " Boys, 

 there's the depot." We are not a demonstrative party, but 

 I think we excused ourselves for the wild cheer that greeted 

 this announcement. It could not have been more than five 

 minutes before everything was packed on the sledges and we 

 were stepping out for those distant specks. The work was 

 as heavy as before, but we were in a very different mood to 

 undertake it. Throughout the morning we had marched in 

 dogged silence; now every tongue was clattering and all 

 minor troubles were forgotten in knowledge that we were 

 going to have a fat hoosh at last. It took us nearly two hours 

 to get up, and we found everything as we had left it, and not 

 much drifted up with snow. 



'We have had our fat hoosh, and again, after a long 

 interval, have a grateful sense of comfort in the inner man. 

 After supper we completed our experimental comparison of 

 the two sledges, which have respectively metal and wood 

 runners ; we equalised the weights as nearly as possible, and 

 started to tow the sledges round singly ; we found that there 

 was an astonishing difference : two of us could barely move 

 the metalled sledge as fast as one could drag the other. We 

 are wholly at a loss to account for this difference ; one would 

 have thought that if metal was ever to give a good running 

 surface it would be now when the temperatures are high; 

 but though the result puzzles us, we have of course decided 

 to strip the second sledge. 



' On the whole things stand favourably for us ; we have 

 perhaps 130 miles to cover to our next depot, but we have 



