448 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



after breakfast it was drifting a lot. While we were having 

 service some of the men went over the camp to get ice for 

 water. The sea-ice had been blown out of North Bay, and 

 the men supposed that the sea was open, and would look 

 black, but Crean tells me that they nearly walked over the 

 ice-foot, and, when it cleared later, we saw the sea as white 

 as the ice-foot itself. A strip of ice which was lying out in 

 the Bay last night must have been brought in by the tide, 

 even against a wind of some forty miles an hour. This shows 

 what an influence the tides and currents have in compari- 

 son with the winds, for just at this time we are having very 

 big tides. It was blowing and drifting all the morning, and 

 the tide was flowing in, pressing the ice in under the ice- 

 foot to such an extent that later it remained there, though 

 the tide was ebbing and a strong southerly was blowing." 1 

 Incidentally the bergs which were grounded in our neigh- 

 bourhood were shifted and broken about considerably by 

 these high winds : also the meteorological screen placed 

 on the Ramp the year before was broken from its upright, 

 which had snapped in the middle, and must have been 

 taken up into the air and so out to sea, for there was no 

 trace of it to be found : Wright lost two doors placed over 

 the entrance to the magnetic cave : when he lifted them 

 they were taken out of his hands by the wind, and disap- 

 peared into the air and were never seen again. 



So ready was the sea to freeze that there can be little 

 doubt that it already contained large numbers of ice crys- 

 tals, and time and again I have stood upon the ice-foot 

 watching the tongues of the winds licking up the waters as 

 they roared their way out to sea. Then, with no warning, 

 there would come, suddenly and completely, a lull. And 

 there would be a film of ice, covering the surface of the sea, 

 come so quickly that all you could say was that it was not 

 there before and it was there now. And then down would 

 come the wind again and it was gone. Once when the 

 winter had gone and daylight had returned I stood upon 

 the end of the cape, the air all calm around me, and there, 

 half-a-mile away, a full blizzard was blowing : the islands, 



1 My own diary. 



