Before they had everything completed on shore, a furious gale sprang up, and from February 23 to 26 all the energies of the party were required to keep the ship from being lost. She dragged her anchor and drifted dangerously near the coast before steam could be got up, and even when the engines were at full speed, she could barely do more than hold her own. Once, two steel cables and a hawser were run out round a jutting rock to afford her some stay, but they snapped like threads when the puff caught her, and for the rest of the time she was kept standing off and on under the lee of Cape Adare. During the winter the explorers had further experience of the character of these southern gales, the wind often attaining a velocity of eighty-five miles an hour, representing a force capable of lifting up and carrying bodily away such a thing as a whale-boat; while the air was, at such times, filled with pebbles and small stones blown from the high lands behind the camp. On one occasion, so fierce was the strength of the wind, that it was found impossible to crawl on hands and knees, and with the assistance of a guide-rope, from the hut to the thermometer-box a couple of hundred yards away. The heaviest member of the party, a man over thirteen stone, was blown from the rope and nearly lost while attempting the journey. On March 2 everything was in order at the huts, and the shore party landed to take up their residence. The flag presented to the expedition by the Duke of York was hoisted, the _Southern Cross_ dipped her ensign to it, everybody cheered, and the vessel steamed out of the bay for New Zealand, leaving the devoted ten the only occupants of the great unknown continent which lies 2500 miles to the south of Australia. [Illustration: THE AURORA AUSTRALIS. _Drawn by Dr. E. A. Wilson._]