* * * * *

Atkinson was the senior officer left, and unless Campbell and his party came in, the command of the Main Party devolved upon him.  It was not a position which any one could envy even if he had been fresh and fit.  Amidst all his anxieties and responsibilities he looked after me with the greatest patience and care.  I was so weak that sometimes I could only keep on my legs with difficulty:  the glands of my throat were swollen so that I could hardly speak or swallow:  my heart was strained and I had considerable pain.  At such a time I was only a nuisance, but nothing could have exceeded his kindness and his skill with the few drugs which we possessed.

Again and again in these days some one would see one or other of the missing parties coming in.  It always proved to be mirage, a seal or pressure or I do not know what, but never could we quite persuade ourselves that these excitements might not have something in them, and every time hope sprang up anew.  Meanwhile the matter of serious importance was the state of the ice in the bays between us and Cape Evans:  we must get help.  All the ice in the middle of the Sound was swept out by the winds of March 30 to April 2, and on the following day Atkinson climbed Arrival Heights to see how the remaining ice looked.  The view over the Sound from here is shown in the frontispiece to this book.  “The ice in the two bays to Cape Evans is quite new—­formed this morning, I suppose, with the rest that is in the Sound.  There are open leads between Glacier Tongue and Cape Evans, inside the line joining the ends of the two.  There is a big berg in between Glacier Tongue and the Islands, and also a flat one off Cape Evans."[274]

We had some good freezing days after this, and on April 5 “we tried the ice this afternoon.  It is naturally slushy and salt, but some hundred yards from the old ice it is six inches thick:  probably it averages about this thickness all over the Sound."[275] Then we had a hard blizzard, on the fourth day of which it was possible to get up the Heights again and see for some distance.  As far as could be judged the ice in the two bays had remained firm:  these bays are those formed on either side of Glacier Tongue, by the Hut Point Peninsula on the south, and by Cape Evans and the islands on the north.

On April 10 Atkinson, Keohane and Dimitri started for Cape Evans, meaning to travel along the Peninsula to the Hutton Cliffs, and thence to cross the sea-ice in these bays, if it proved to be practicable.  The amount of daylight was now very restricted, and the sun would disappear for the winter a week hence.  Arrived at the Hutton Cliffs, where it was blowing as usual, they lost no time in lowering themselves and their sledge on to the sea-ice, and were then pleasantly surprised to find how slippery it was.  “We set sail before a strong following breeze and, all sitting on the sledge, had reached the Glacier Tongue in twenty minutes.  We clambered over the Tongue, and, our luck and the breeze still holding, we reached Cape Evans, completing the last seven miles, all sitting on the sledge, in an hour.”