place chosen for the hut for shelter
was worse than useless. They had far better have built in the open,
for the fierce wind, instead of striking them directly, was deflected
on to them in furious whirling gusts. Heavy blocks of snow and rock
placed on the roof were whirled away and the canvas ballooned up,
tearing and straining at its securings--its disappearance could only
be a question of time. They had erected their tent with some valuables
inside close to the hut; it had been well spread and more than amply
secured with snow and boulders, but one terrific gust tore it up and
whirled it away. Inside the hut they waited for the roof to vanish,
wondering what they could do if it went, and vainly endeavouring to
make it secure. After fourteen hours it went, as they were trying
to pin down one corner. The smother of snow was on them, and they
could only dive for their sleeping-bags with a gasp. Bowers put his
head out once and said, 'We're all right,' in as near his ordinary
tones as he could compass. The others replied 'Yes, we're all right,'
and all were silent for a night and half a day whilst the wind howled
on; the snow entered every chink and crevasse of the sleeping-bags,
and the occupants shivered and wondered how it would all end.

This gale was the same (July 23) in which we registered our maximum
wind force, and it seems probable that it fell on C. Crozier even
more violently than on us.

The wind fell at noon the following day; the forlorn travellers crept
from their icy nests, made shift to spread their floor-cloth overhead,
and lit their primus. They tasted their first food for forty-eight
hours and began to plan a means to build a shelter on the homeward
route. They decided that they must dig a large pit nightly and cover
it as best they could with their floorcloth. But now fortune befriended
them; a search to the north revealed the tent lying amongst boulders a
quarter of a mile away, and, strange to relate, practically uninjured,
a fine testimonial for the material used in its construction. On the
following day they started homeward, and immediately another blizzard
fell on them, holding them prisoners for two days. By this time the
miserable condition of their effects was beyond description. The
sleeping-bags were far too stiff to be rolled up, in fact they were
so hard frozen that attempts to bend them actually split the skins;
the eiderdown bags inside Wilson's and C.-G.'s reindeer covers served
b