5.30 P.M. Gran returned an hour and a quarter
afterwards. He had gone about two hundred yards.

Atkinson had not gone much farther when he decided that he had better
give it up, so he turned and faced the wind, steering by keeping it on
his cheek. We discovered afterwards that the wind does not blow quite in
the same direction at the end of the Cape as it does just where the hut
lies. Perhaps it was this, perhaps his left leg carried him a little
farther than his right, perhaps it was that the numbing effect of a
blizzard on a man's brain was already having its effect, certainly
Atkinson does not know himself, but instead of striking the Cape which
ran across his true front, he found himself by an old fish trap which he
knew was 200 yards out on the sea-ice. He made a great effort to steady
himself and make for the Cape, but any one who has stood in a blizzard
will understand how difficult that is. The snow was a blanket raging all
round him, and it was quite dark. He walked on, and found nothing.

Everything else is vague. Hour after hour he staggered about: he got his
hand badly frost-bitten: he found pressure: he fell over it: he was
crawling in it, on his hands and knees. Stumbling, tumbling, tripping,
buffeted by the endless lash of the wind, sprawling through miles of
punishing snow, he still seems to have kept his brain working. He found
an island, thought it was Inaccessible, spent ages in coasting along it,
lost it, found more pressure, and crawled along it. He found another
island, and the same horrible, almost senseless, search went on. Under
the lee of some rocks he waited for a time. His clothing was thin though
he had his wind-clothes, and, a horrible thought if this was to go on, he
had boots on his feet instead of warm finnesko. Here also he kicked out a
hole in a drift where he might have more chance if he were forced to lie
down. For sleep is the end of men who get lost in blizzards. Though he
did not know it he must now have been out more than four hours.

There was little chance for him if the blizzard continued, but hope
revived when the moon showed in a partial lull. It is wonderful that he
was sufficiently active to grasp the significance of this, and groping
back in his brain he found he could remember the bearing of the moon from
Cape Evans when he went to bed the night before. The hut must be
somewhere over there: this must be Inaccessible Island! He left the
island and made in that direction,