March 14.

We now numbered sixteen at this congested station; the sun was very
little above the horizon and gales were so bad that spray dashed over the
small hut occasionally, whilst all round the low-lying parts of the coast
wonderful spray ridges of ice were formed. We had our proportion of
blizzard days and suffered somewhat from the cold, for it was rarely
calm. Some of us began to long for the greater comforts of the Cape Evans
Hut; there was no day, no hour in fact, when some one did not climb up
the hillock which was surmounted by the little wooden cross put up in
memory of Seaman Vince of the "Discovery" expedition, to see and note the
ice conditions.

Winter was coming fast and night shadows of cruel dark purple added to
the natural gloom of Hut Point and its environments. Wilson was the one
man amongst us who profited most from our sojourn here. In spite of bad
light and almost frozen fingers he managed to make an astonishing
collection of sketches, portraying the autumn scenes near this corner of
Ross Isle. How sinister and relentless the western mountains looked, how
cold and unforgiving the foothills, and how ashy gray the sullen icefoots
that girt this sad, frozen land.

There was, of course, no privacy in the crowded hut-space, and when
evening came it was sometimes rather a relief to get away to some
sheltered corner and look out over the Sound. The twilight shades and
colours were beautiful in a sad sort of way, but the stillness was awful.
Whenever the wind fell light new ice would form which seemed to crack and
be churned up with every cat's-paw of wind. The currents and tidal
streams would slowly carry these pancakes of ice up and down the Strait
until the weather was calm enough and cold enough to cement them together