On the same day every one was abroad, advancing the wireless masts another stage and digging ice-shafts. Stillwell commenced a contoured plane-table survey of the neighbourhood of Winter Quarters. He continued this with many breaks during the next few months and eventually completed an accurate and valuable map, undeterred by the usual series of frost-bites. There was much anticipated of July, but the wind soughed on and the temperature decreased. Just to demonstrate its resource, the wind maintained ninety-seven miles per hour for six hours on July 19, while the puff-anemometer indicated several "breaks" of one hundred and fifty miles per hour. July 21 was cold, calm and clear. For the first time after many weeks the sun was mildly warm, and all felt with a spring of optimism that a new era had begun. The sea which had been kept open by the wind was immediately overspread with thin, dark ice, which in a few hours was dotted with many ice-flowers aggregates of fern-like, sprouting fronds similar to small bouquets or rosettes. Soon the surface had whitened and thickened and by next morning was firm enough to hold a man out beyond the nearest island. The wind did not allow this state of affairs to last for long, for by lunch-time it had hurried away the wide floes and raged across a foaming sea. We still considered the question of sledging, and I decided that if there were the slightest prospect of accomplishing anything, several of us would start before the end of July on a short journey. The month, however, closed with nothing to commend it. The night-watchman for July 29 says: "The moon was wonderfully bright to-night, encircled by a complete halo. It appeared to hang suspended like a silver globe in the dark blue sky. The stars flash and sparkle and seem much nearer here than in Australia. At midnight the wind blew at ninety miles per hour, so that it was no easy job getting to the screen in slippery finnesko. Away in the north there was a dense cloud of spray and sea-smoke, and the wind screamed past the Hut. The 'St. Elmoscope' was buzzing merrily in the roof all the time." Ninnis and Mertz with a team of dogs managed, on the morning of the 29th, to get several loads of forty pounds over the first steep rise of the glacier to Webb's magnetic ice-cave against a "blow" of seventy miles per hour. August 1 was marked by a hurricane, and the celebration in the evening of Swiss Confederation Day. Mertz was the hero of the occasion as well as cook and master of ceremonies. From a mysterious box he produced all kinds of quaint conserves, and the menu soared to unknown delicacies like "Potage a la Suisse, Choucroute garnie aux saucission de Berne, Puree de foie gras trufee, and Leckerley de Bale." Hanging above the buoyant assembly were the Cross of Helvetia and the Jack of Britannia.