Page:Aurora Australis.djvu/39

THE ASCENT OF MOUNT EREBUS. all, down the ravine. Adams had just succeeded in reaching the sleeping bag, on his hands and knees when Brocklehurst appeared, also on his hands and knees, having just succeeded by desperate efforts in pulling himself back, over the rocks: it was a close call. He was all but completely gone, so biting was the cold, before he reached the haven of the sleeping-bag. He and Adams crawled in, and then, as the bag had been much twisted up, and drifted with snow while Marshall had been holding it down, Adams and Marshall got out to try and straighten it up; a moment later the violent wind doubled the bag right over, and they had become so benumbed by the cold that they were unable to turn it over again. Providentially, just when they too were beginning to feel gone with the cold, the wind blew the bag right way up again, and opened it for them; they lost no time in slipping in:

There was nothing for it, while the blizzard lasted, but to lie low in our sleeping-bags. At intervals we munched a plasmon biscuit, or a piece of bovril chocolate. We had nothing to drink all that day and the following night, as of course, under the circumstances, it was impossible to keep a primus alight in order to thaw the snow for water. We got some sleep that night, in spite of the raging of the storm.