I9II] A FIERCE STORM 103 
backs. I remained at the hut with Abbott, who was 
laid up with water on the knee, and I was kept busy- 
by the combined duties of cook and bottle-washer, 
meteorologist, etc. 
August 10. — Levick's party returned at 4 p.m., 
bringing in all our equipment. They had had overcast 
weather and high temperatures, and Levick had only been 
able to get six photographs, which were not good. 
August 16. — We woke up this morning to find the 
ice had gone out in the night. This was a bitter 
disappointment and a blow to all my hopes of a western 
journey over the sea ice — the only comfort is that it 
came when it did, as had it come a fortnight later, we 
should have gone out with it. Yesterday a strong blizzard 
began to blow from the S.E., with lots of drift, and 
the gale continued very hard all day. About 8 p.m. it 
lulled a little, only to come on again with redoubled 
violence between 10 p.m. and midnight. 
The squalls were terrific, harder than anything we 
had yet experienced, shaking the hut so that several 
things fell off the shelves. The roof of our store house 
was torn off, and the two gable ends which took all six 
of us to lift were slung about 20 yards away. 
This morning the water extended from our beach to 
the coast of the mainland a little west of the Dugdale 
Glacier, and as far as we could see to the westward. 
Three Antarctic and two snowy petrels, attracted no 
doubt by the open water, were flying about the beach. 
On the 17th, Levick, Priestley, and I climbed Cape 
Adare to see the ice conditions in the Ross Sea after the 
