Otherwise, as far as actual visible drift was
concerned, we might have been on dry land.
For the next few days we made good progress, drifting seven miles to
the north on November 24 and another seven miles in the next forty-
eight hours. We were all very pleased to know that although the wind
was mainly south-west all this time, yet we had made very little
easting. The land lay to the west, so had we drifted to the east we
should have been taken right away to the centre of the entrance to the
Weddell Sea, and our chances of finally reaching land would have been
considerably lessened.
Our average rate of drift was slow, and many and varied were the
calculations as to when we should reach the pack-edge. On December 12,
1915, one man wrote: "Once across the Antarctic Circle, it will seem as
if we are practically halfway home again; and it is just possible that
with favourable winds we may cross the circle before the New Year. A
drift of only three miles a day would do it, and we have often done
that and more for periods of three or four weeks.
"We are now only 250 miles from Paulet Island, but too much to the
east of it. We are approaching the latitudes in which we were at this
time last year, on our way down. The ship left South Georgia just a
year and a week ago, and reached this latitude four or five miles to
the eastward of our present position on January 3, 1915, crossing the
circle on New Year's Eve.
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