Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/183

434 and Wright, Keohane and Gran started back for Cape Evans before 10 We could then see the outline of Inaccessible Island, and the ice in the Sound looked fairly firm. So they determined to go by the way of the sea-ice under Castle Rock instead of going along the Peninsula to the Hutton Cliffs. Soon after they started it came up thick, and by 11.30 it was blowing a mild blizzard with a low temperature. We felt considerable anxiety, especially when a full blizzard set in with a temperature down to −31°, and we could not see how the ice was standing it. Two days later it cleared, and that night a flare was lit at Cape Evans at a pre-arranged time, by which signal we knew that they had arrived safely. We heard afterwards that when it came up thick they decided to follow the land which was the only thing that they could see. They soon found that the ice was not nearly so good as was supposed: there were open pools of water, and some of the ice was moving up and down with their weight as they crossed it: Gran put his foot in. Then Wright went ahead with the Alpine rope, the ice being blue, the pulling easy, and the wind force 4-5. As far as Turtleback Island the ice was newly frozen, but after that they knew they were on oldish ice. They were lost on Cape Evans in the blizzard for some time, but eventually found the hut safely. One of the lessons of this expedition is that too little care was taken in travelling on sea-ice.

Atkinson, Dimitri and I left for Cape Evans with the two dog-teams on May 1. Directly we started it was evident that the surface was very bad: even the ice near Hut Point, which had been frozen for a long time, was hard pulling for the dogs, and when after less than a mile we got on to ice which had frozen quite lately the sledges were running on snow which in turn lay on salt sleet. It seemed a long time before we got abreast of Castle Rock, following close along the land for the weather was very thick: when we started we could just see the outline of Inaccessible Island, but by now the horizon was lost in the dusk and haze. We decided to push on to Turtleback Island and go over Glacier Tongue in order to get on to the older ice