Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/96

Rh exertion of man-hauling a heavy sledge for hours. At lunch camp one's feet often get pretty cold, but this goes off as soon as some hot tea is got into the system. As a rule, even when snowing, one's socks, etc., will dry if there is a bit of a breeze. They are always frozen stiff in the morning and can best be thawed out by bundling the lot [under one's] jersey during breakfast. They can then be put on tolerably warm even if wet.

"We started off on a hard rippled blue surface like a sea frozen intact while the wind was playing on it. It soon got worse and we had to have one and sometimes two hands back to keep the sledge from skidding. Of course it was easy enough stuff to pull on, but the ground was very uneven, and sledges constantly capsized. It did not improve the runners either. There were few crevasses.

"All day we went on in dull cloudy weather with hardly any land visible, and the glacier to be seen only for a short distance. In the afternoon the clouds lifted somewhat and showed us the Adam Mountains. The surface was better for the sledges but worse for us, as there were countless cracks and small crevasses, into which we constantly trod, barking our shins. As the afternoon sun came round the perspiration fairly streamed down, and it was impossible to keep goggles clear. The surface was so slippery and uneven that it was difficult to keep one's foothold. However we did 12½ miles, and felt that we had really done a good day's work when we camped. It was not clear enough to survey in the evening, so I took the sledge-meter in hand and worked at it half the night to repair Christopher's damage. I ended up by making a fixing of which I was very proud, but did not dare to look at the time, so I don't know how much sleep I missed.

"There is no doubt that Scott knows where to aim for in a glacier, as it was just here that Shackleton had two or three of his worst days' work, in such a maze of crevasses that he said that often a slip meant death for the whole party. He avoids the sides of the glacier and goes nowhere near the snow: he often heads straight for apparent chaos