Stillwell's party had pitched their tent about ten paces to the leeward side of ours, of which stratagem they continually reminded us. Going outside for food to supply our two small meals per day was an operation fraught with much discomfort to all. This is what used to happen. The man on whom the duty fell had to insinuate himself into a bundle of wet burberrys, and, as soon as he was outside, they froze stiff. When, after a while, he signified his intention of coming in, the other two would collect everything to one end of the tent and roll up the floor-cloth. Plastered with snow, he entered, and, despite every precaution, in removing burberrys and brushing himself he would scatter snow about and increase the general wetness. On these excursions we would visit Stillwell's tent and be hospitably, if somewhat gingerly, admitted; the inmates drawing back and pulling away their sleeping-bags as from one with a fell disease. As a supporting party they were good company, among other things, supplying us with tobacco ad libitum. When we parted, five days after, we missed them very much. During the night the wind blew harder than ever--that terrible wind, laden with snow, that blows for ever across the vast, mysterious plateau, the "wind that shrills all night in a waste land, where no one comes or hath come since the making of the world." In the early hours of the morning it reached eighty miles per hour. Not till 9 next morning did the sky clear and the drift diminish. Considering that it had taken us eight days to do thirteen miles, we decided to move on the 16th at any cost. Our library consisted of 'An Anthology of Australian Verse', Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair' and 'Hints to Travellers' in two volumes. McLean spent much of the time reading the Anthology and I started 'Vanity Fair'. The latter beguiled many weary hours in that tent during the journey. I read a good deal aloud and McLean read it afterwards. Correll used to pass the days of confinement arranging rations and costs for cycling tours and designing wonderful stoves and cooking utensils, all on the sledging, "cut down weight" principle. On the 16th we were off at 9 A.M. with a blue sky above and a "beam" wind of thirty-five miles per hour. Up a gentle slope over small sastrugi the going was heavy. We went back to help Stillwell's party occasionally, as we were moving a little faster.