THE GRANITE HARBOUR EXPEDITION 333 



and help my party across to Butter Point with most of our 

 gear. Then we could rapidly return and pick up Debenham 

 if the rest had sufficiently cured his disabled leg. 



On the 7th of November we started off on our first relay. 

 We left about ten o'clock, taking a small sledge from the hut 

 with our sledging gear. We soon picked up our main load 

 on the big sledge, and then began really heavy work. One 

 is always soft and out of condition after the winter, and it 

 takes about a week to get into sledging trim again. It was 

 not very cheering to find we could only get along at the rate 

 of about one mile an hour, for a large part of the gear to be 

 dragged to Granite Harbour, lay thirty miles west at Butter 

 Point ! In fact, even with this light load, the surfaces made 

 us relay at times, and the effect on one's body muscles seemed 

 at first almost unbearable. By lunch-time we had only left 

 the hut about four and a half miles behind. 



It was blowing strongly from the south-east, and I saw 

 a snowdrift rushing along the ice. When we reached a patch 

 of snow suitable for a camp site, I pitched our tent, and this 

 halt for lunch unfortunately served for supper and breakfast 

 also. It was blizzing hard in ten minutes, and we were only 

 just able to get the tent up in time. Forde was able to help 

 greatly, though his hand was still in a sling. 



We were now no longer new chums, and it was pleasant 

 to find that sledging was so much more comfortable than on 

 our first expedition. We now realized that if we could keep 

 out the snow, we should help the human furnace enormously. 

 For every snowflake in or on one's garments, first melted and 

 then turned to ice, and all this had to be thawed each night 

 before one could get warm enough to sleep. So this trip we 

 carried a shilling scrubbing brush, and every one was most 

 assiduous in its use. 



It was amusing how little trouble we had in donning 

 our frozen boots now. Some one had hung his on the peak 

 of the tent, while the cooker was going for breakfast, and 

 now they were almost too pliant when we needed to put them 

 on. It was a greater comfort to have a wider floor-cloth. 

 Now the outside men were not pushed into the snow, and 

 our instruments and notes were kept much more securely 

 than on the former journey. 



As the blizzard increased it drove snow on to the 



