THE ARCTIC AND THE ANTARCTIC 45 



have our meals there, and if the weather was very 

 bad we should still be able to work under shelter. 

 We therefore struck camp in the morning and spent 

 the whole day bringing our gear over, and I don't 

 think any of us would care to repeat the day, which 

 I will describe as it is recorded in my diary. 



7 p.m. Strong south-west breeze all day, freshening 

 to a full gale at night. We have had an awful day, 

 but have managed to shift enough gear into the cave 

 to live temporarily. Our tempers have never been 

 so tried during the whole of our life together, but they 

 have stood the strain pretty successfully. After break- 

 fast Abbott and Browning came over and started to 

 carry the sugar and chocolate boxes to the cave. Then 

 I went over to their tent and took them three or four 

 days' biscuit ration and their chocolate and brought 

 back a tin of oil and my carrier. By the time I got 

 back the others had struck camp and piled everything 

 on the sledge, and we sledged everything along the 

 edge of the glacier until we were as near the drift as 

 possible. The wind, which had lulled a little, was 

 again beginning to freshen when I started,, a few minutes 

 before the others, with my pack for the cave, and 

 then rose rapidly to 'gale strength, with heavy drift 

 in the gusts. My pack, a sleeping-bag, rucksack, and 

 bag of notebooks, etc., was very unwieldy, and was 

 rendered more so within the first hundred yards, when 

 the sleeping-bag unshipped its moorings and came loose. 

 I then slung the latter round me to windward, and it 

 was handicapped in this manner that I finished the 

 trip. 



May I never have such another three trips as were 

 those to-day. Every time the wind lulled a little I fell 





