THE LAST WINTER 439 



sand and stones up against the wall of the hut. The 

 greater part of the time the anemometer head was choked 

 by the drifting snow, and Debenham, whose night-watch 

 it was, had a bad time in clearing it at 4 a.m. During the 

 period when it was working it registered a gust of over 91 

 miles an hour. While it was not working there came a gust 

 which woke most people up, and which was a far more 

 powerful one, making a regular hail of stones against the 

 wall. The next morning the wind was found to be averag- 

 ing 104 miles an hour when the anemometer on the hill was 

 checked for three minutes. Later it was averaging 78 miles 

 an hour. This blizzard continued to rage all this day and 

 the next, but on May 6, which was one of those clear beau- 

 tiful days when it is hard to believe that it can ever blow 

 again, we could see something of the damage to the sea-ice. 

 The centre of the Sound was clear of ice, and the open 

 water stretched to the S.W. of us as far back as Tent Island. 

 We were to have many worse blizzards during this winter, 

 but this particular blow was important because it came at 

 a critical time in the freezing over of the sea, and, once it 

 had been dispersed, the winds of the future never allowed 

 the ice to form again sufficiently thick to withstand the 

 wind forces which obtained. 



Thus I find in my diary of May 8 : " Up to the present 

 we have never considered the possibility of the sea in this 

 neighbourhood, and the Sound out to the west of us, not 

 freezing over permanently in the winter. But here there is 

 still open water, and it seems quite possible that there may 

 not be any permanent freezing this year, at any rate to the 

 north of Inaccessible Island and this cape. Though North 

 Bay is now frozen over, the ice in it was blown away during 

 the night, and, having been blown back again, is now only 

 joined to the ice-foot by newly frozen ice." 



During this winter the ice formed in North Bay was 

 constantly moving away from the ice-foot, quite indepen- 

 dently of wind. I watched it carefully as far as it was 

 possible to do so in the dark. Sometimes at any rate the 

 southern side of the sea-ice moved out not only northwards 

 from the land, but also slightly westwards from the glacier 



