SOUTH 
pups. We have ten working sledges to relay with five teams. 
Wild's and Hurley's teams will haul the cutter with the assis- 
tance of four men. The whaler and the other boats will follow, 
and the men who are hauling them will be able to help with 
the cutter at the rough places. We cannot hope to make rapid 
progress, but each mile counts. Crean this afternoon has a 
bad attack of snow-blindness." 
The weather on the morning of October 30 was overcast 
and misty, with occasional falls of snow. A moderate north- 
easterly breeze was blowing. We were still living on extra food, 
brought from the ship when we abandoned her, and the sledging 
and boating rations were intact. These rations would provide 
for twenty-eight men for fifty-six days on full rations, but we 
could count on getting enough seal and penguin meat to at 
least double this time. We could even, if progress proved too 
difficult and too injurious to the boats, which we must guard as 
our ultimate means of salvation, camp on the nearest heavy floe, 
scour the neighbouring pack for penguins and seals, and await 
the outward drift of the pack to open and navigable water. 
This plan would avoid the grave dangers we are now incurring 
of getting entangled in impassable pressure-ridges and possibly 
irretrievably damaging the boats, which are boimd to suffer 
in rough ice ; it would also minimize the peril of the ice splitting 
under us, as it did twice during the night at our first camp. 
Yet I feel sure that it is the right thing to attempt a march, 
since if M^e can make fiA^e or seven miles a day to the north-west 
our chance of reaching safety in the months to come will be 
increased greatly. There is a psychological aspect to the 
question also. It will be much better for the men in general 
to feel that, even though progress is slow, they are on their 
way to land than it will be simply to sit down and wait for 
the tardy north-westerly drift to take us out of this cruel waste 
of ice. We will make an attempt to move. The issue is 
beyond my power either to predict or to control." 
That aft.ernoon Wild and I went out in the mist and snow 
to find a road to the north-east. After many devious turnings 
to avoid the heavier pressure-ridges, we pioneered a way for 
at least a mile and a half, and then returned by a rather better 
82 
