The remaining days of August were comparatively uneventful.  The ice around the ship froze firm again and little movement occurred in our neighbourhood.  The training of the dogs, including the puppies, proceeded actively, and provided exercise as well as occupation.  The drift to the north-west continued steadily.  We had bad luck with soundings, the weather interfering at times and the gear breaking on several occasions, but a big increase in the depth showed that we had passed over the edge of the Weddell Sea plateau.  A sounding of about 1700 fathoms on August 10 agreed fairly well with Filchner’s 1924 fathoms, 130 miles east of our then position.  An observation at noon of the 8th had given us lat. 71° 23´ S., long. 49° 13´ W. Minus temperatures prevailed still, but the daylight was increasing.  We captured a few emperor penguins which were making their way to the south-west.  Ten penguins taken on the 19th were all in poor condition, and their stomachs contained nothing but stones and a few cuttle-fish beaks.  A sounding on the 17th gave 1676 fathoms, 10 miles west of the charted position of Morell Land.  No land could be seen from the mast-head, and I decided that Morell Land must be added to the long list of Antarctic islands and continental coasts that on close investigation have resolved themselves into icebergs.  On clear days we could get an extended view in all directions from the mast-head, and the line of the pack was broken only by familiar bergs.  About one hundred bergs were in view on a fine day, and they seemed practically the same as when they started their drift with us nearly seven months earlier.  The scientists wished to inspect some of the neighbouring bergs at close quarters, but sledge travelling outside the well-trodden area immediately around the ship proved difficult and occasionally dangerous.  On August 20, for example, Worsley, Hurley, and Greenstreet started off for the Rampart Berg and got on to a lead of young ice that undulated perilously beneath their feet.  A quick turn saved them.

A wonderful mirage of the Fata Morgana type was visible on August 20.  The day was clear and bright, with a blue sky overhead and some rime aloft.

“The distant pack is thrown up into towering barrier-like cliffs, which are reflected in blue lakes and lanes of water at their base.  Great white and golden cities of Oriental appearance at close intervals along these clifftops indicate distant bergs, some not previously known to us.  Floating above these are wavering violet and creamy lines of still more remote bergs and pack.  The lines rise and fall, tremble, dissipate, and reappear in an endless transformation scene.  The southern pack and bergs, catching the sun’s rays, are golden, but to the north the ice-masses are purple.  Here the bergs assume changing forms, first a castle, then a balloon just clear of the horizon, that changes swiftly into an immense mushroom, a mosque, or a cathedral.  The principal characteristic is the vertical lengthening of the object, a small pressure-ridge being given the appearance of a line of battlements or towering cliffs.  The mirage is produced by refraction and is intensified by the columns of comparatively warm air rising from several cracks and leads that have opened eight to twenty miles away north and south.”