Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 1.djvu/268

Rh away, leaving the Alpine rope there to facilitate ascent (i.e. for any party returning to Hut Point with food). We then repacked the sledges and headed across the bay towards the Glacier Tongue, where we arrived after dark about 6 The young sea-ice was covered in a salt deposit which made it like pulling a sledge over treacle instead of ice, and it was very heavy going after the snow uplands. The Tongue was mostly hard blue ice, which is slipperiness itself, and crevassed every few yards. Most of these were bridged, but you were continually pushing a foot, or sometimes two, into nothingness, in the semi-darkness. None of us, however, went down to the extent of our harness.

"Arrived on the other side we struck a sheltered dip, where we decided to camp for something to eat. It was after 8 and I was for camping there for the night, as it seemed to me folly to venture upon a piece of untried newly frozen sea-ice in inky darkness, with a blizzard coming up behind us. Against this of course we were only five miles from Cape Evans, and though we had hardly any grub with us, not having anticipated the cliff or the saltness of the sea-ice, and having to set out to do the journey in one day, I thought hunger in a sleeping-bag better than lying out in a blizzard on less than one foot of young ice.

"After a meal we started off at 9.30 in a snowy mist in which we could literally see nothing. It had fallen calm though, and at last we could see the outline of the nearest of the Dellbridge Islands called the Great Razorback; our course lay for a smaller island ahead called the Little Razorback. As we neared the Little Razorback Island the snow hid everything; in fact we could hardly see the island itself when we were right under it. It was impossible to go wandering on, so we had after all to camp on the sea-ice. There was scarcely any snow to put on the valances of the tents, and the wet salt soaked the bags, and you knew that there was only about six or ten inches of precarious ice between you and the black waters beneath. Altogether I decided that I for one would lie awake in such an insecure camp.