From the day we turned hack I heard my darling's voice no more. But I
had a still more perplexing and tormenting experience, and that was a
dream about her, in which she was walking on a crevassed glacier towards
a precipice which she could not see because the brilliant rays of the
aurora were in her eyes.
Anybody may make what he likes of that on grounds of natural law, and
certainly it was not surprising that my dreams should speak to me in
pictures drawn from the perils of my daily life, but only one thing
matters now--that these experiences of my sleeping hours increased my
eagerness to get back to my dear one.
My comrades were no impediment to that, I can tell you. With their faces
turned homewards, and the wind at their backs, they were showing
tremendous staying power, although we had thirty and forty below zero
pretty constantly, with rough going all the time, for the snow had been
ruckled up by the blizzard to almost impassable heaps and hummocks.
On reaching our second installation at Mount Darwin I sent a message to
the men at the foot of Mount Erebus, telling them to get into
communication (through Macquarie Island) with the captain of our ship in
New Zealand, asking him to return for us as soon as the ice conditions
would permit; and this was the last of our jobs (except packing our
instruments tight and warm) before we started down the "long white
gateway" for our quarters at the Cape.
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