A MIRAGE 195 



However, Forde was pretty right next day and my eyes soon 

 stopped aching, though everything appeared double for many 

 hours 1 



On the 8th we reached the land near Cape Bernacchi. There 

 was a steep ice slope 200 feet high at an angle of 30. Luckily 

 it was much honeycombed and sun-eaten. We put grummets 

 (rope brakes on the sledge and managed to get it down by 

 1.30 P.M. We had a very cheerful lunch, for we knew the 

 depot was only a few miles south. Then we found an ice-foot 

 all the way along the edge of the rocks and moraine which led 

 us right to the Bernacchi cairn. This was a regular ice pathway 

 about 20 yards wide. It was due to sea ice which had become 

 cemented to the shore, the tide crack being farther away from 

 the rocks and defining that part of the floe which had lately 

 drifted away to sea. 



No one had visited our depot. New Harbour was full of 

 new broken floe, but a fine ice-foot seemed to promise well for 

 our next march. 



We stayed a day at Cape Bernacchi, for I wished to get a 

 good station for the triangulation of this coast. Gran and I 

 took the theodolite to the top of a hill 2900 feet high at the 

 north-east end of Dry Valley. We named this Hjort's Hill in 

 honour of the maker of our trusty primus lamp. As we were 

 climbing this hill Gran swore he could see the ship off Cape 

 Evans through the binoculars. It seemed clear to me also 

 smoke, cross-trees, hull, and 3 masts, but after an hour or so we 

 decided it was only a miraged crack in the Barne glacier. Our 

 disappointment was very keen, though I am now not so sure that 

 we did not really see the ship, some forty miles away. We could 

 see the twenty-foot debris cones behind the hut quite easily on 

 a clear day. 



I wrote the usual letter to Pennell. I had left two in Granite 

 Harbour and two on* the piedmont now, though it did not look 

 as if any would ever be read. All through the loth we skirted 

 New Harbour, finding a fairly feasible ice-foot between the 

 granite-strewn slopes and the open water. We came across a 

 Spratt's biscuit box here which was evidently left by the 1902 

 expedition. We saved a considerable detour by crossing the head 

 of the harbour on the sea ice and camped below the Kukri Hills, 

 where I halted rather early to get a round of angles. We were 



