192 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
we were quite lost until an iceberg which we recognized 
showed us that we had been walking at right angles to our 
course, and got us safe home. 
Ona clear crisp day, with the full moon to show you the 
ridges and cracks and sastrugi, it was most pleasant to put 
on your ski and wander forth with no object but that of 
healthy pleasure. Perhaps you would make your way round 
the bluff end of the cape and strike southwards. Here you 
may visit Nelson working with his thermometers and cur- 
rent meters and other instruments over a circular hole in 
the ice, which he keeps open from day to day by breaking 
out the ‘biscuit’ of newly formed ice. He has connected 
himself with the hut by telephone, and built round himself 
an igloo of drifted snow and the aforesaid * biscuits,’ which 
effectually shelter him from the wind. Or you may meet 
Meares and Dimitri returning with the dog-teams from a 
visit to Hut Point. A little farther on the silence is com- 
plete. But now your ear catches the metallic scratch of ski 
sticks on hard ice; there is some one else ski-ing over 
there, it may be many miles away, for sound travels in an 
amazing way. Every now and then there comes a sharp 
crack like a pistol shot; it is the ice contracting in the 
glaciers of Erebus, and you know that it is getting colder. 
Your breath smokes, forming white rime over your face, 
and ice in your beard; if it is very cold you may actually 
hear it crackle as it freezes in mid air! 
These were the days which remain visibly in the mind 
as the most enjoyable during this first winter season. It 
was all so novel, these much-dreaded, and amongst us 
much-derided, terrors of the Long Winter Night. The 
atmosphere is very clear when it is not filled with snow or 
ice crystals, and the moonlight lay upon the land so that we 
could see the main outlines of the Hut Point Peninsula, 
and even Minna Bluff out on the Barrier ninety miles away. 
The ice-cliffs of Erebus showed as great dark walls, but 
above them the blue ice of the glaciers gleamed silvery, 
and the steam flowed lazily from the crater carried away 
in a long line, showing us that the northerly breezes pre- 
vailed up there, and were storing up trouble in the south. 
