Beyond the erection of the wireless masts, everything was now ready for
the sledging journey. On the day when the wind abated, a party set to
work digging holes for the masts and stay-posts. The former were to
be fifty-two feet high, four and a half feet being buried in the ice.
Unfortunately, a strong breeze with thick drift sprang up just as
hoisting operations had started, and in a few minutes the holes were
filled up and the workers had to run for shelter. Meanwhile, four men
had succeeded in rescuing all the buried stores, some being stowed
alongside the hut, and the remainder stacked up again on a new level.

On came another severe blizzard, which continued with only a few
minutes' interval until the evening of the 12th. During the short
lull, Jones, Dovers and Hoadley took a sledge for a load of ice from a
pressure-ridge rather less than two hundred yards from the hut.
While they were absent, the wind freshened again, and they had great
difficulty in finding a way to the entrance.

It was very disappointing to be delayed in this manner, but there was
consolation in the fact that we were better off in the hut than on the
glacier, and that there was plenty of work inside. The interior was thus
put in order much earlier than it would otherwise have been.

In erecting the hut, it was found that a case of nuts and bolts was
missing, and many places in the frame had in consequence to be secured
with nails. For a while I was rather doubtful how the building would
stand a really heavy blow. There was, however, no need for uneasiness,
as the first two blizzards drifted snow to such a depth in our immediate
vicinity that, even with the wind at hurricane force, there was scarcely
a tremor in the building.

The morning of Wednesday March 13 was calm and overcast. Breakfast was
served at six o'clock. We then set to work and cleared away the snow
from the masts and stay-posts, so that by 8.30 A.M. both masts were in
position. Before the job was over, a singular sight was witnessed. A
large section of the glacier--many thousands of tons--calved off into
the sea. The tremendous waves raised by the fall of this mass smashed
into fragments all the floe left in the bay. With the sea-ice went the
snow-slopes which were the natural roadway down. A perpendicular cliff,
sixty to one hundred feet above the water, was all that remained, and
our opportunities of obtaining seals and penguins in the future were cut
off. Of course, too,