just
out of sight of the sea. Every one slept soundly after a good day's
pulling.

November 18 was a bright dazzling day, the sky dotted with fleecy
alto-cumulus. At 6 A.M. we were out to find Stillwell's party moving in
their tent. There was a rush for shovels to fill the cookers with snow
and a race to boil hoosh.

At this camp we tallied up the provisions, with the intention of taking
what we might require from Stillwell and proceeding independently of
him, as he was likely to leave us any day. There were fifty-nine days to
go until January 15, 1913, the latest date of arrival back at the Hut,
for which eight weeks' rations were considered to be sufficient. There
were seven weeks' food on the sledge, so Stillwell handed over another
fifty-pound bag as well as an odd five pounds of wholemeal biscuit. The
total amount of kerosene was five gallons, with a bottle of methylated
spirit.

Shortly after eight o'clock we caught sight of Dr. Mawson's camp, and
set sail to make up the interval. This we did literally as there was
a light westerly breeze--the only west wind we encountered during the
whole journey.

The sledge was provided with a bamboo mast, seven feet high, stepped
behind the cooker-box and stayed fore and aft with wire. The yard was
a bamboo of six feet, slung from the top of the mast, its height being
varied by altering the length of the slings. The bamboo was threaded
through canvas leads in the floor-cloth which provided a spread of
thirty square feet of sail. It was often such an ample area that it had
to be reefed from below.

With the grade sloping gently down and the wind freshening, the pace
became so hot that the sledge often overran us. A spurious "Epic of the
East" (see 'Adelie Blizzard') records it:

Crowd on the sail-
Let her speed full and free "on the run"
Over knife-edge and glaze, marble polish and pulverized chalk
The finnesko glide in the race, and there's no time for talk.
Up hill, down dale,
It's all in the game and the fun.

We rapidly neared Dr. Mawson's camp, but when we were within a few miles
of it, the other party started in a south-easterly direction and were
soon lost to sight. Our course was due east.

At thirty-three and a half miles the sea was in sight, some fine
flat-topped bergs floating in the nearest bay. Suddenly a dark, rocky
nunatak sprang into view on our left. It was a sudden contrast after ten
days of unchanging whiteness, a