rwards, lightly loaded one way and empty the other,
until all was across. The shelf-ice is without doubt afloat, if the
presence of sea-water and diatomaceous stains on the ice is of any
account. We camped to-night in the same place as on the evening of
November 25, so with luck we should be out of this mess to-morrow.
Switzerland had to be killed as I cannot afford any more biscuit.
Amundsen ate his flesh without hesitation, but Zip refused it."

Sure enough, two days sufficed to bring us under the bluff on David
Island. As the tents were being pitched, a skua gull flew down. I snared
him with a line, using dog's flesh for bait and we had stewed skua for
dinner. It was excellent.

While I was cooking the others climbed up the rocks and brought back
eight snow petrels and five eggs, with the news that many more birds
were nesting. After supper we all went out and secured sixty eggs and
fifty-eight birds. It seemed a fearful crime to kill these beautiful,
pure white creatures, but it meant fourteen days' life for the dogs end
longer marches for us.

Fresh breeze, light snow and a bad light on the 9th; we remained in
camp. Two more skuas were snared for the evening's dinner. The snow
petrels' eggs were almost as large as hens' eggs and very good to eat
when fresh. Many of them had been under the birds rather too long, but
although they did not look so nice, there was little difference in the
taste. I was very glad to get this fresh food, as we had lived on tinned
meat most of the year and there was always the danger of scurvy.

The light was too changeable to make a satisfactory start until the
evening of December 11, when we managed to dodge through four and a
half miles of broken ice, reaching the mainland close to our position
on November 16, and camping for lunch at midnight. In front was a clear
mile on a peninsula and then the way led across Robinson Bay, seven
miles wide, fed by the Northcliffe Glacier.

Another night march was commenced at 8 P.M. The day had been cloudless
and the sun very warm, softening the surface, but at the time of
starting it was hardening rapidly. Crossing the peninsula we resolved to
head across Robinson Bay as the glacier's surface was still torn up. We
ended with a fine march of twelve miles one thousand two hundred yards.

The fine weather continued and we managed to cross three and a half
miles of heavy sastrugi, pressure-ridges and crevasses, attaining the
first slopes of the ma