444 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



The mean velocity of the wind, in miles per hour, for the 

 month of May was 24.6 m.p.h.; for June 30.9 m.p.h.; and 

 for July 29.5 m.p.h. The percentage of hours when the 

 wind was blowing over fresh gale strength (42 m.p.h. on 

 the Beaufort scale) for the month of May was 24.5, for 

 June 3$, and for July 33 per cent of the whole. 



These figures speak for themselves : after May we lived 

 surrounded by an atmosphere of raging winds and blind- 

 ing drift, and the sea at our door was never allowed to 

 freeze permanently. 



After the blizzard in the beginning of May which I have 

 already described, the ice round the point of Cape Evans 

 and that in North Bay formed to a considerable thickness. 

 We put a thermometer screen out upon it, and Atkinson 

 started a fish-trap through a hole in it. There was a good 

 deal of competition over this trap: the seamen started a rival 

 one, which was to have been a very large affair, though it 

 narrowed down to a less ambitious business before it was 

 finished. There was a sound of cheering one morning, and 

 Crean came in triumph from his fish-trap with a catch of 

 25. Atkinson's last catch had numbered one, but the seals 

 had found his fishing-holes : a new hole caught fish until 

 a seal found it. One of these fish, a Tremasome, had a 

 parasitic growth over the dorsal sheath. External para- 

 sites are not common in the Antarctic, and this was an 

 interesting find. 



On June 1 Dimitri and Hooper went with a team of 

 nine dogs to and from Hut Point, to see if they could 

 find Noogis, the dog which had left us on our return 

 on May 1 . There was plenty of food for him to pick 

 up there. No trace of him could be found. The party 

 reported a bad running surface, no pressure in the ice, as 

 was the case the former year, but a large open working 

 crack running from Great Razorback to Tent Island. 

 There were big snowdrifts at Hut Point, as indeed was 

 already the case at Cape Evans. During the first days of 

 June we got down into the minus thirties, and our spirits 

 rose as the thermometer dropped : we wanted permanent 

 sea-ice. 



