IN WINTER QUARTERS WITH CAPTAIN SCOTT 277 



He got back quite safely to the tide gauge, which was only 

 a stone's throw from the hut. Then he was completely lost. 

 The wind had dropped somewhat. He tried to keep it full 

 in his face ; and, perhaps, owing to eddies around the cape, 

 he must have wandered due west away from the hut and 

 towards the open sea. After some hours of helpless wandering, 

 where he had to keep moving to prevent his freezing to death, 

 he came to some high cliffs. He thought these might be 

 the walls of Inaccessible Island, but there is little doubt that 

 he had wandered south now, and was skirting Tent Island. 

 He tried to burrow into the snow-drifts here, and so got his 

 hand badly frostbitten. Then the moon showed faintly, and 

 he owed his life to the fact that he remembered to have seen 

 the moon over Erebus (and therefore east) on the preceding 

 night. So he staggered towards the moon, and after about 

 an hour and a half he reached Cape Evans, and was safe. 

 We had imagined that the blizzard, constantly blowing from 

 the south, would have enabled him to steer east to the coast ; 

 but, owing to lulls and to eddies, and finally to his dazed 

 condition, he lost all sense of direction, and would have 

 undoubtedly perished but for the moon. The search parties 

 got in by 2 a.m., and then the blizzard fury increased nearly 

 to gale strength, and continued all next day. It was only 

 during the six hours while Atkinson was lost that it lulled 

 sufficiently to permit of any one venturing away from land. 

 If it had kept up to its original or final strength, we might 

 easily have had other casualties in the search parties. 



The recital of dreams, as furnishing outside interests of a 

 sort, was occasionally tolerated in the hut. I wonder if most 

 people go through my dream evolution ? As a child, a feeling 

 of terror, often that primitive idea of falling and never hitting 

 anything, which is a survival of tree life. Later, the growth 

 of a belief that the dreamer himself never gets hurt. And 

 then in the late 'teens the comfortable realization that it's 

 only a dream, to be followed by " dreams within dreams " ; 

 and, finally, at the age of thirty by logical reasoning while 

 dreaming. 



I noted that we had been south six months before I began 

 to dream of snow and ice, and this perhaps is of psychological 

 interest. In one dream " I was climbing up above Grindel- 

 wald, aided by a New Zealand guide, in company with Dr. 



