We marched on, with one halt at 6 a.m., till half-past eleven.  After a supper of seal steaks and tea we turned in.  The surface now was pretty bad.  High temperatures during the day made the upper layers of snow very soft, and the thin crust which formed at night was not sufficient to support a man.  Consequently, at each step we went in over our knees in the soft wet snow.  Sometimes a man would step into a hole in the ice which was hidden by the covering of snow, and be pulled up with a jerk by his harness.  The sun was very hot and many were suffering from cracked lips.

Two seals were killed to-day.  Wild and McIlroy, who went out to secure them, had rather an exciting time on some very loose, rotten ice, three killer-whales in a lead a few yards away poking up their ugly heads as if in anticipation of a feast.

Next day, December 26, we started off again at 1 a.m.  “The surface was much better than it has been for the last few days, and this is the principal thing that matters.  The route, however, lay over very hummocky floes, and required much work with pick and shovel to make it passable for the boat-sledges.  These are handled in relays by eighteen men under Worsley.  It is killing work on soft surfaces.”

At 5 a.m. we were brought up by a wide open lead after an unsatisfactorily short march.  While we waited, a meal of tea and two small bannocks was served, but as 10 a.m. came and there were no signs of the lead closing we all turned in.

It snowed a little during the day and those who were sleeping outside got their sleeping-bags pretty wet.

At 9.30 p.m. that night we were off again.  I was, as usual, pioneering in front, followed by the cook and his mate pulling a small sledge with the stove and all the cooking gear on.  These two, black as two Mohawk Minstrels with the blubber-soot, were dubbed “Potash and Perlmutter.”  Next come the dog teams, who soon overtake the cook, and the two boats bring up the rear.  Were it not for these cumbrous boats we should get along at a great rate, but we dare not abandon them on any account.  As it is we left one boat, the ‘Stancomb Wills’, behind at Ocean Camp, and the remaining two will barely accommodate the whole party when we leave the floe.

We did a good march of one and a half miles that night before we halted for “lunch” at 1 a.m., and then on for another mile, when at 5 a.m. we camped by a little sloping berg.

Blackie, one of Wild’s dogs, fell lame and could neither pull nor keep up with the party even when relieved of his harness, so had to be shot.

Nine p.m. that night, the 27th, saw us on the march again.  The first 200 yds. took us about five hours to cross, owing to the amount of breaking down of pressure-ridges and filling in of leads that was required.  The surface, too, was now very soft, so our progress was slow and tiring.  We managed to get another three-quarters of a mile before lunch, and a further mile due west over a very hummocky floe before we camped at 5.30 a.m.  Greenstreet and Macklin killed and brought in a huge Weddell seal weighing about 800 lbs., and two emperor penguins made a welcome addition to our larder.