NEARING THE COAST 



a little cheese and biscuit. After this short halt 

 we pulled on again, steering north-8°-east magnetic. 

 Mawson occasionally swept the horizon with our ex- 

 cellent field-glasses in hopes of sighting our depot. 

 Suddenly he exclaimed that he saw the depot flag 

 distinctly on its ice mound, apparently about seven 

 miles distant, but it was well round on the starboard 

 bow of our sledge on a bearing of south-38°-west mag- 

 netic. Mackay and I were much excited at Mawson's 

 discovery. Mackay seized the field-glasses as soon as 

 Mawson put them down and directed them to the spot 

 indicated, but could see no trace of the flag; then I 

 looked through the glasses with equally negative results. 

 Mawson opined that we must both be snow-blind. 

 Then he looked through them again, and at once ex- 

 claimed that he could see no trace of the flag now. 

 The horizon seemed to be walloping up and down, just 

 as though it was boiling, evidently the result of a mirage. 

 Mawson, however, was so confident that he had seen 

 the flag when he first looked, that we altered course to 

 south-38°-west magnetic, and after we had gone a 

 httle over a mile, and reached the top of a slight emi- 

 nence in the ice-surface, we were rejoiced to hear the 

 announcement that he could now see the depot flag 

 distinctly. We kept on sledging for several miles further. 

 At midnight, when the temperature had fallen to zero, 

 I felt that the big toe of my right foot was getting frost- 

 bitten. My sld-boots had all day been filled with the 

 soft snow and the warmth of my foot had thawed the 

 snow, so that my socks were wet through; and now, 

 since the springing up of the wind and the sudden fall in 

 temperature, the water in the socks had turned to ice. 

 So we halted, got up the tent, started the Primus and 

 prepared for a midnight meal, while, with Mawson's 

 assistance, I got off my frozen ski-boots and socks and 



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