THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



sea. " When we found that the ice had gone out," 

 wrote Armytage in his report to me, " we struck camp, 

 loaded up the sledge, and started away with the object 

 of seeing whether we could get off the floe to the north. 

 The position seemed to be rather serious, for we could 

 not hope to cross any stretch of open water, there was 

 no reasonable expectation of assistance from the ship, 

 and most of our food was at Butter Point. We had not 

 gone very far to the north before we came to an impassible 

 lane of open water, and we decided to return to our 

 original position. We went into camp, and had break- 

 fast at 11 A.M. Then we held a consultation and 

 agreed that it would be best to stop where we then were 

 for a time, at any rate, on the off -chance of the ship 

 coming along one of the lanes to pick us up on the 

 following day, or of the current changing and the ice 

 once more touching the shore. We waited till three 

 o'clock in the afternoon, but there did not seem to be 

 any improvement in the position. The Killer whales 

 were spouting in the channels, and occasionally bumping 

 the ice under us. Then we marched north again, but 

 met with open water in every direction, and after we 

 had marched right round the floe we got into camp at 

 the old position at 10 p.m. We had a small meal of 

 hoosh and biscuit. We had only four days' provisions 

 on the floe with us, and I decided that we would have 

 to go on short rations. We were encouraged by the 

 fact that we had apparently ceased to move north, and 

 were perhaps getting nearer the fast ice again. We 

 got into our sleeping-bags in order to keep warm. At 

 11.30 P.M. Brocklehurst turned out to see whether the 

 position had changed, and reported that we seemed to 

 l3e within a few hundred yards of the fast ice, and still 

 moving towards the land. I got out of my bag and 

 put on my finnesko, and at midnight saw that we were 



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