SPRING 303 



very few . . . to-day after a night's rest our travellers are 

 very different in appearance and mental capacity." * 



" Atch has been lost in a blizzard," was the news which 

 we got as soon as we could grasp anything. Since then he 

 has spent a year of war in the North Sea, seen the Dar- 

 danelles campaign, and much fighting in France, and has 

 been blown up in a monitor. I doubt whether he does not 

 reckon that night the worst of the lot. He ought to have 

 been blown into hundreds of little bits, but always like 

 some hardy indiarubber ball he turns up again, a little 

 dented, but with the same tough elasticity which refuses 

 to be hurt. And with the same quiet voice he volunteers 

 for the next, and tells you how splendid everybody was 

 except himself. 



It was the blizzard of July 4, when we were lying in 

 the windless bight on our way to Cape Crozier, and we 

 knew it must be blowing all round us. At any rate it was 

 blowing at Cape Evans, though it eased up in the after- 

 noon, and Atkinson and Taylor went up the Ramp to read 

 the thermometers there. They returned without great 

 difficulty, and some discussion seems to have arisen as to 

 whether it was possible to read the two screens on the sea- 

 ice. Atkinson said he would go and read that in North 

 Bay : Gran said he was going to South Bay. They started 

 independently at 5.30 p.m. Gran returned an hour and 

 a quarter afterwards. He had gone about two hundred 

 yards. 



Atkinson had not gone much farther when he decided 

 that he had better give it up, so he turned and faced the 

 wind, steering by keeping it on his cheek. We discovered 

 afterwards that the wind does not blow quite in the same 

 direction at the end of the Cape as it does just where the 

 hut lies. Perhaps it was this, perhaps his left leg carried 

 him a little farther than his right, perhaps it was that the 

 numbing effect of a blizzard on a man's brain was already 

 having its effect, certainly Atkinson does not know him- 

 self, but instead of striking the Cape which ran across 

 his true front, he found himself by an old fish trap which 



1 Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. p. 361. 



