THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



penguins. On the other side of this crack our wheels 

 stuck fast in snow sastrugi. All hands got on to the 

 spokes and started swinging the car backwards and 

 forwards; when we got a good swing on, Day would 

 suddenly snatch on the power and over we would go — > 

 that is, over one of the sastrugi — only to find, often, 

 that we had just floundered into another one ahead. 

 In performing one of these evolutions Priestley, who as 

 usual, was working like a Trojan, got his hand rather 

 badly damaged through its being jammed between the 

 spokes of the car wheel and the framework. Almost 

 immediately afterwards one of my fingers was nearly 

 broken, through the same cause, the flesh being torn off 

 one of my knuckles; and then Mackay seriously 

 damaged his wrist in manipulating what Joyce called 

 the " thumb-brealdng " starter. Still we went flounder- 

 ing along over the sastrugi and ice cracks. Day every 

 now and then getting out to lighten the car and limping 

 alongside. At last we succeeded in reaching a spot 

 amongst the snow sastrugi on the sea ice, fifteen miles 

 distant from our winter quarters. Here we dumped the 

 load intended for the Northern Party, and then Day had 

 a hard struggle to extricate the car from the tangle of 

 sastrugi and ice- cracks. At last, after two capsizes 

 of the sledges, we got back into camp at 10 p.m., 

 all thoroughly exhausted, all wounded and bandaged. 

 Brocklehurst carried Day on his back for about a 

 quarter of a mile from where we left the car up to our 

 winter quarters. So thoroughly exhausted were we, that 

 we had to take a day's rest on October 4, before making 

 our final start. 



The following are the details respectively of our 

 permanent load and equipment and of our consumable 

 load (food and oil) when we did eventually start: 



80 



