Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/168

turned in, and being tired after our hard pull were soon asleep. I was awakened about 9 p.m. by a tremendous din, and found the lee skirting of the tent had blown out from under the heavy ice blocks we had piled on it, and the tent poles were bending under the weight of wind. We just had time to roll out of our bags and hang on to the skirting or the tent would have gone. Taking advantage of a lull we got out and piled more ice on the skirting, but even that was not enough, and we spent a miserable night hanging on to the skirting of the tent. The blizzard dropped by noon the next day, and by one o'clock we were off again, camping at 5.30, when it was too dark to go on.

Starting again just before daybreak on the 4th, we reached the hut the same evening. The temperatures we experienced were not low, the lowest being −26·8° F.

The chief result of this journey was to show that we must expect very bad travelling surfaces up the coast and that I must alter my original plan, which was to start about August 20 with two units of three. I now saw that it would take a party of four to get along over the pressure ice we must expect, so I decided to take Priestley, Abbott, and Dickason with six weeks' provisions and do without a supporting party, leaving Levick and Browning to carry on the work at Cape Adare.

August 8.—Levick, Priestley, Browning, and Dickason left this morning for Warning Glacier to do geology. We had depôted our outfit about 10 miles down the coast, only packing our sleeping-bags, so they were able to go without a sledge, taking their sleeping-bags on their