the ships. Now,
however, all were able to concentrate upon it, and the work went forward
very rapidly.

All the wireless instruments, and much of the other paraphernalia of
the Macquarie Island party had been packed in the barrels, as it was
expected that they would have to be rafted ashore through the surf.
Fortunately, the weather continued to "hold" from an easterly direction,
and everything was able to be landed in the comparatively calm waters
of Hasselborough Bay; a circumstance which the islanders assured us was
quite a rare thing. The wireless masts were rafted ashore. These were of
oregon pine, each composed of four sections.

Digging the pits for bedding the heavy, wooden "dead men," and erecting
the wireless masts, the engine-hut and the operating-hut provided
plenty of work for all. Here was as busy a scene as one could witness
anywhere--some with the picks and shovels, others with hammers and
nails, sailors splicing ropes and fitting masts, and a stream of men
hauling the loads up from the sea-shore to their destination on the
summit.

Some details of the working of the "flying fox" will be of interest. The
distance between the lower and upper terminals was some eight hundred
feet. This was spanned by two steel-wire carrying cables, secured above
by "dead men" sunk in the soil, and below by a turn around a huge rock
which outcropped amongst the tussock-grass on the flat, some fifty yards
from the head of the boat harbour. For hauling up the loads, a thin wire
line, with a pulley-block at either extremity, rolling one on each of
the carrying wires, passed round a snatch-block at the upper station. It
was of such a length that when the loading end was at the lower station,
the counterpoise end was in position to descend at the other. Thus a
freight was dispatched to the top of the hill by filling a bag, acting
as counterpoise, with earth, until slightly in excess of the weight of
the top load; then off it would start gathering speed as it went.

Several devices were developed for arresting the pace as the freight
neared the end of its journey, but accidents were always liable to occur
if the counterpoise were unduly loaded. Wild was injured by one of these
brake-devices, which consisted of a bar of iron lying on the ground
about thirty yards in front of the terminus, and attached by a rope with
a loose-running noose to the down-carrying wire. On the arrival of the
counterpoise at that point on the wire,