een worn in drift for a couple
of days.

That night I decided that one more day must see us at our depot.
Allowing three days' grace for contingencies, there were thirty-one days
for us to attain our farthest southerly point and back to the Hut.

On the 12th we planned to reach a spot for the depot, two hundred
miles out, and by 11.30 P.M. came on a fine site at one hundred and
ninety-nine and three-quarter miles; altitude four thousand eight
hundred and fifty feet, latitude 69 degrees 83.1' south; longitude
140 degrees 20' east. Everything possible was left behind, the
sledge-decking being even cut away, until only three light bamboo slats
remained. A pile, including ten days' food and one gallon of kerosene,
was placed on a small mound to prevent it being drifted over. A few
yards distant rose a solid nine-foot cairn surmounted by a black
canvas-and-wire flag, six feet higher, well stayed with steel wire.

I took on food for seventeen days, three days more than I intended to
be out, partly so that we could keep on longer if we found we could
make very fast time, and also as a safeguard against thick weather when
returning to the depot.

Late in the evening we set off against a stiff breeze. The sledge ran
lightly for three and a half miles, and we camped. The depot showed up
well in the north-west as a bright golden spot in the low midnight sun.

Next day the piecrust was so bad that, despite the lessened load, we
only covered twelve miles. The surface was smoothly polished, and we
either crashed through it from four inches to a foot or else slipped and
came down heavily on knees, elbow, or head. New finnesko were largely
responsible for such an accident.

At 11 P.M. a remarkable ramp, five chains long, was passed. On its
windward side was a tangled cluster of large sastrugi. They made one
imagine that the wind, infuriated at finding a block of snow impeding
its progress, had run amok with a giant gouge, endeavouring to pare it
down. Every now and then, the gouge, missing its aim, had taken great
lateral scoops from the surface, leaving trenches two and three feet
deep.

In bags that night we had a talk (not the first by any means) over
our prospects. Up to the one hundred-and-seventy-four-mile camp, four
hundred miles seemed dimly possible, but now we saw we would be lucky to
reach three hundred miles. Moreover, the dip at this spot was 89 degrees
11', practically what it had been ever since one hundred and f