INTRODUCTION liti 
by the wind so far as they could see, and yet she did not 
come. They concluded that she must have been wrecked. 
The actual fact was that thick pack ice lay beyond their 
vision through which Pennell was trying to drive his ship 
time after time, until he had either to go or to be frozen in. 
He never succeeded 1n approaching nearer than 27 miles. 
It was now that a blizzard wind started to blow down 
from the plateau behind them out into the continually open 
sea in front. The situation was bad enough already, but 
of course such weather conditions made it infinitely worse. 
Evans Coves is paved with boulders over which all jour- 
neys had to be fought leaning against the wind as it blew: 
when a lull came the luckless traveller fell forward on to his 
face. Under these circumstances it was decided that pre- 
parations must be made to winter where they were, and 
to sledge down the coast to Cape Evans in the follow- 
ing spring. The alternative of sledging down the coast in 
March and April never seems to have been seriously con- 
sidered. At Hut Point, of course, we were entirely in the 
dark as to what the party would do, hence Atkinson’s jour- 
ney over to the western side in April 1912. 
Meanwhile the stranded men divided into two parties 
of three men each. The first under Campbell sank a shaft 
six feet down into a large snow-drift and thence, with pick 
and shovel, excavated a passage and at the end of it a cave, 
twelve feet by nine feet, and five feet six inches high. The 
second under Levick sought out and killed all the seal and 
penguin they could find, but their supply was pitifully 
small, and the men never had a full meal until mid-winter 
night. One man always had to be left to look after the 
tents, which were already so worn and damaged that it was 
unsafe to leave them in the wind. 
By March 17 the cave was sufficiently advanced for 
three men to movein. Priestley must tell how this was done, 
but it should not be supposed that the weather conditions 
were in any way abnormal on what they afterwards called 
Inexpressible Island: 
“March 17. 7 p.m. Strong south-west breeze all day, 
freshening to a full gale at night. We have had an awful 
