434 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



and Wright, Keohane and Gran started back for Cape 

 Evans before 10 a.m. We could then see the outline of 

 Inaccessible Island, and the ice in the Sound looked fairly- 

 firm. So they determined to go by the way of the sea-ice 

 under Castle Rock instead of going along the Peninsula 

 to the Hutton Cliffs. Soon after they started it came up 

 thick, and by 1 1.30 it was blowing a mild blizzard with a 

 low temperature. We felt considerable anxiety, especially 

 when a full blizzard set in with a temperature down to 

 - 31 , and we could not see how the ice was standing it. 

 Two days later it cleared, and that night a flare was lit at 

 Cape Evans at a pre-arranged time, by which signal we 

 knew that they had arrived safely. We heard afterwards 

 that when it came up thick they decided to follow the land 

 which was the only thing that they could see. They soon 

 found that the ice was not nearly so good as was supposed: 

 there were open pools of water, and some of the ice was 

 moving up and down with their weight as they crossed it: 

 Gran put his foot in. Then Wright went ahead with the 

 Alpine rope, the ice being blue, the pulling easy, and the 

 wind force 4-5. As far as Turtleback Island the ice was 

 newly frozen, but after that they knew they were on oldish 

 ice. They were lost on Cape Evans in the blizzard for some 

 time, but eventually found the hut safely. One of the 

 lessons of this expedition is that too little care was taken 

 in travelling on sea-ice. 



Atkinson, Dimitri and I left for Cape Evans with the 

 two dog-teams on May 1. Directly we started it was 

 evident that the surface was very bad: even the ice near 

 Hut Point, which had been frozen for a long time, was hard 

 pulling for the dogs, and when after less than a mile we got 

 on to ice which had frozen quite lately the sledges were 

 running on snow which in turn lay on salt sleet. It seemed 

 a long time before we got abreast of Castle Rock, following 

 close along the land for the weather was very thick : when 

 we started we could just see the outline of Inaccessible 

 Island, but by now the horizon was lost in the dusk and 

 haze. We decided to push on to Turtleback Island and 

 go over Glacier Tongue in order to get on to the older ice 



