Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/174

Priestley, Browning, and Dickason went with him, and the party took provisions for a week.

September 27.—Levick and his party returned to-day and reported bad weather and blizzards nearly the whole time. They managed, however, to get a few photographs. I am arranging to start on our western journey October 1. Levick and Browning will come as far as Cape Wood to take photographs.

October 3.—Weather-bound until to-day, when, the weather clearing in the afternoon, we transported our sledges and gear over the pressure ice lying round the beach and left them three miles south.

October 4.—A fine morning, so after a 5.30 breakfast we started away with our sleeping-bags on our backs, and picking up our sledges made pretty good progress over salt-flecked ice with occasional belts of pressure.

To show the superiority of our iron runners over salt-flecked ice, I may mention that two of us pulled the iron-runner sledge weighing 1000 lbs. and kept ahead of Levick's sledge with only 200 lbs. and four men in the traces. About 12 miles out we came to a lot of pressure, so I took my party, consisting of Priestley, Abbott, and Dickason, and steered for Relay Bay, telling Levick and Browning to go their own pace and make the best of their way to the cave.

We camped that night in the middle of Relay Bay and after supper pulled the iron-runner sledge and depôt to a cave discovered on the north side of Point Penelope on a former journey, where we left it, as this sledge is no use in deep snow. We found Levick had just arrived all right,