Similarities appear between the language used by Mawson and Jack Ward to describe the sound and silence of Antarctic landscape:
The climate proved to be little more than one continuous blizzard the year round; a hurricane of wind roaring for weeks together, pausing for breath only at odd hours. Such pauses – lulls of a singular nature – were a welcome relief to the dreary monotony, and on such occasions the auditory sense was strangely affected. The contrast was so severe when the racking gusts of an abating wind suddenly gave way to intense, errie silence that the habitual droning of many weeks would still reverberate in the ears. At night one would involuntarily wake up if the wind died away and be loth to sleep “for the hunger of a sound.” In the open air the stillness conveyed to the brain an impression of audibility, interpreted as a vibratory murmur.
(Mawson, 2002; 77)
Mawson’s language changes to explain the previously mysterious lulls:
In the course of time, after repeated observations, much of the mystery connected with these lulls was cleared up…
It was established that even when whole days of calm prevailed at the Hut, the wind, even without exception, continued to blow as usual above a level of one thousand feet. On such occasions it appeared that the gale was impelled to blow straight out from the plateau slopes over a low stratum of dead air.
So we came to realize that when a calm fell upon the Hut, the wind had merely retired to higher elevations and hung over us like the sword of Damocles, ready to descend at any moment.
(Mawson, 2002;78)