That night, after following the magnetic needle towards the south-east, we were fairly on the plateau at one hundred and forty miles, with an altitude of four thousand four hundred feet. The dip, however, had steadily decreased, standing now at 88 degrees 30'. There was some consolation in the hope that a big, sudden rise was stored up for us somewhere along the way ahead. December 4 and 5 were fine days, giving only twenty-two miles, as we met with a rough surface; a large quantity of very hard, razor-backed sastrugi, generally about two feet high, like groined vaulting inverted, on a small scale. Sledge and sledge-meter both had a very rough passage. The sledge, for instance, balances itself on the top of a sastruga for a moment, with an ominous bend in the runners, crashes down the slope and jams its bow into the next one, from which it has to be lifted clear. During this run the needle again misbehaved itself, changing its direction some 85 degrees in ten miles, but by the night of the 5th we were getting past the disturbed locality and the dip had increased considerably. For the first time on the trip the wind veered round to the south-east. Snow had fallen overnight (December 5) and had drifted in long ramps diagonally across the sastrugi. In two and a half hours we covered two and a quarter miles, blindly blundering in an uncertain light among crests and troughs and through piles of soft, new snow. Then we stopped; Webb filling in the afternoon with a full set of dip observations. That night the break-wind played its one possible trick. Waking on the 8th, we found that the heavy snowfall, with only a moderate wind, had drifted us up. Of course Hurley and I, who slept on the 'outsides,' had known it most of the night. Before we could extricate ourselves from the bags Webb had to turn out from the middle to dig away the drift which was weighing down the walls of the tent on top of us. It was hopeless weather for travelling. In the afternoon a snow cave was dug, seven feet deep and enlarged to seven feet square at the bottom. The whole was covered with mast, yard and sail. It was very snug from the outward aspect, but we soon found that there were two objections to the "Sarcophagus," as it was named. There was very little light except a ghastly blue half-tone filtering through the snow, and the place was not over warm, surrounded by walls at a much lower temperature than that of the surface.