THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



after this the snow ceased to fall, though the drift-snow, 

 borne along by the blizzard wind, still made the weather 

 thick. Several times they thought that they saw Cape 

 Royds, but found that they had been mistaken. As 

 a matter of fact they were quite close to the winter 

 quarters when, at about 7 p.m., they were found by 

 Day. They were in a state of complete exhaus- 

 tion, and were just managing to stagger along because 

 they knew that to stop meant death. Within a few 

 minutes they were in the hut, where warm food, 

 dry clothes and a good rest soon restored them. They 

 had a narrow escape from death, and would prob- 

 ably have never reached the hut had not Day 

 happened to be outside watching for the return of 

 the ship. 



Mackintosh and McGillan reached the hut on January 

 12, but in the meantime the Nimrod had arrived at 

 Cape Royds and had gone north again in search of the 

 missing men. Murray had sailed in the Nimrod, and 

 as events turned out, he was not able to get back to the 

 hut for about ten days. " We were having tea on the 

 afternoon of January 5, and Marston happening to open 

 the door, there was the Nimrod already moored to the 

 edge of the fast ice, not more than a mile away," wrote 

 Murray in a report on the summer work. " We ran 

 towards the ship, over the rotten sea ice, in boots or 

 slippers as chanced, with the one idea that is uppermost 

 in these circumstances — to get ' letters from home.' 

 We were doomed to disappointment. Before we had 

 finished greeting our old friends, the officers asked us, 

 ' Has Mackintosh arrived? ' and we learned to our 

 horror that he and a companion had left the ship two 

 days before and thirty miles north of Cape Royds, to 

 try to bring the letters sooner to us over the sea ice, 

 over the bay where only a few days ago we saw a broad 



48 



