A SECOND RETREAT 



Mawson and I favoured retreat, and trying a passage in 

 some other direction. 



At last we decided to retreat. Our fortunes now, so 

 far as the possibiUty of reaching the Magnetic Pole 

 were concerned, seemed at a low ebb. It was already 

 December 20, and we knew that we had to be back 

 at our depot on the Drygalski Glacier not later than 

 February 1 or 2, if there was to be a reasonable chance 

 of our being picked up by the Nimrod. We had not 

 yet climbed more than 100 ft. or so above sea-level, 

 and even this little altitude was due to our having 

 climbed ice-pressure ridges, which from time to time 

 dipped down again to sea-level. We knew that we 

 had to travel at least 480 to 500 miles before we could 

 hope to get to the Magnetic Pole and back to our depot, 

 and there remained only six weeks in which to accom- 

 plish this journey, and at the same time we would have 

 yet to pioneer a road up to the high plateau. Now that 

 everything was buried under soft snow it was clear that 

 sledging would be far slower and more laborious than 

 ever. We soon proved that this was the case, for after 

 starting the sledge it gathered masses of soft snow 

 around it and under it as it went, and at the end of 

 200 yards we had to halt for a temporary rest, hoist the 

 sledge up on one side and knock away the masses of 

 clogged snow from underneath it. This had to be 

 repeated every few hundred yards, and after we had 

 gone half a mile we decided to leave the sledge and go 

 ahead with ice-axes and Alpine rope to reconnoitre. 



We started off in a south-westerly direction with the 

 intention of seeing whether the Mount Bellingshausen 

 Glacier slope would be more practicable for our sledges 

 than the Mount Nansen Glacier. We trudged through 

 soft thawing snow with here and there shallow pools 

 of water on the surface of the ice. This, of course, 



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