44Q WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



face. To the north-east the ice was sometimes pressed 

 closely up against the glacier. It seemed that the whole 

 sheet was subject to a screw movement, the origin of 

 which was somewhere out by Inaccessible Island. The 

 result was that we often had a series of leads of newly 

 frozen ice stretching out for some forty yards to an older 

 piece of ice, each lead being of a different age. It was an 

 interesting study in the formation of sea-ice, covered at 

 times by very beautiful ice-flowers. But it was dangerous 

 for the dogs, who sometimes did not realize that these leads 

 were not strong enough to bear them. Vaida went in one 

 day, but managed to scramble out on the far side. He was 

 induced to return to the land with difficulty, just before 

 the whole sheet of ice upon which he stood floated out to 

 sea. Noogis, Dimitri's good leader, wandered away several 

 times during the winter: once at any rate he seems to have 

 been carried off on a piece of ice, and to have managed to 

 swim to land, for when he arrived in camp his coat was full 

 of icy slush : finally he disappeared altogether, all search 

 for him was in vain, and we never found out what had 

 happened. 



Vaida was a short-tempered strong animal, who must 

 have about doubled his weight since we came in from One 

 Ton, and he became quite a house-dog this winter, waiting 

 at the door to be patted by men as they went out, and 

 coming in sometimes during the night-watch. But he did 

 not like to be turned out in the morning, and for my part I 

 did not like the job, for he could prove very nasty. We 

 allowed a good many of the dogs to be loose this year, and 

 sometimes, when standing quietly upon a rock on the cape, 

 three or four of the dogs passed like shadows in the dark- 

 ness, busily hunting the ice-foot for seals : this was the 

 trouble of giving them their freedom, and I regret to say 

 we found many carcasses of seal and Emperor penguins. 

 There was one new dog, Lion, who accompanied me some- 

 times to the top of the Ramp to see how the ice lay out in 

 the Sound. He seemed as interested in it as I was, and 

 while I was using night-glasses would sit and gaze out 

 over the sea which according to its age lay white or black 



