s may have attempted to check the sledge with his foot,
but to stop it in any way would have meant a broken leg. We held on for
our lives, lying face downwards on the sledge. Suddenly it seemed to
spring into the air, we had left the ice and shot over one yawning
crevasse before we had known of its existence almost--I do not imagine we
were more than a second in the air, but in that brief space of time I
looked at Crean, who raised his eyebrows as if to say, "What next!" Then
we crashed on to the ice ridge beyond this crevasse, the sledge capsized
and rolled over and over, dragging us three with it until it came to a
standstill.

How we ever escaped entirely uninjured is beyond me to explain. When we
had recovered our breath we examined ourselves and our sledge. One of my
ski-sticks had caught on a piece of ice during our headlong flight and
torn itself from the sledge. It rolled into the great blue-black chasm
over which we had come, and its fate made me feel quite cold when I
thought of what might have happened to us. When my heart had stopped
beating so rapidly from fright, and I had recovered enough to look round,
I realised that we were practically back on the Beardmore again, and that
our bold escapade had saved us three days' solid foot slogging and that
amount of food. So we pitched our little tent, had a good filling meal,
and then, delighted with our progress, we marched on until 8 p.m. That
night in our sleeping-bags we felt like three bruised pears, but being in
pretty hard condition in those days, our bruises and slight cuts in no
way kept us from hours of perfect, contented slumber.

I see in my diary for January 13, 1912, I have noted that we came down
2000 feet, but I doubt if it really was as much--we then had no means of
measuring.

January 14 found us up at 5.45 (really only 4.45, because in order not to
make my seamen companions anxious I handicapped my watch after first
day's homeward march, putting the hands on one hour each morning before
rising, and back when I got the chance, so that we marched from 10 to 12
hours a day). We hauled our sledge for six hours until we reached the
Upper Glacier Depot under Mount Darwin. Here we took 3 1/2 days' stores
as arranged, and after sorting up and repacking the depot had lunch and
away down the Glacier, camping at 7.30 p.m. off Buckley Island, fairly
close to the land. Temperature rose above zero that night.

Next day we were away at 8 a.m. with our cramp