ce the
halt would do for our lunch. With the greatest difficulty we found
amongst the hummocky ice a place to set up our tent. A space was found
somehow, and rather gloomily the three of us made a cooker full of tea.
We munched our biscuit in silence, for we were too tired to talk. From
time to time I went outside the tent, and certainly the atmosphere was
clearer. Odd shapes to the east and west showed themselves to be the
fringing mountains which so few eyes had ever rested on. Gradually they
took form and I was able more or less to identify our whereabouts. We
finished our lunch, Crean had a smoke, and then we got under way.

A little discussion, a lot of support, and a wealth of whole-hearted
good-fellowship from my companions gave me the encouragement which made
leading these two men so easy.

Warmed by the tea, cheered by the meal, and rested by the halt, we pushed
on once more, although to go forward was uncertain and to work back
impossible since we were too exhausted to do such pulling upward as would
be necessary to reach a place from whence a new start could be made, even
if we succeeded in re-discovering our night camp of yesterday.

For hours we fought on, sometimes overcoming crevasses by bridging them
with the sledge where its length enabled this to be done. The summer sun
had cleared the snow from this part of the glacier, laying bare the great
blue, black cracks, and they were horrible to behold. If the breadth of a
crevasse was too large to be crossed we worked along the bank until an
ice bridge presented itself along which we could go. As the sun's rays
grew more powerful, the visibility became perfect, and I must confess we
were disappointed to see before us the most disheartening wilderness of
pressure ridges and disturbances. We were in the heart of the Great Ice
Fall which is to be found half-way down the Beardmore Glacier. We
struggled along, for there is no other expression which aptly describes
our case. Had we not been in superb physical training and in really hard
condition all three of us must have collapsed. We literally carried the
sledge, which weighed nearly four hundred pounds.

When the afternoon march had already extended for hours we found
ourselves travelling mile after mile across the line of our intended
route to circumvent the crevasses. They seemed to grow bigger and bigger.
At about 8 p.m. we were travelling on a ridge between two stupendous open
gulfs, and we found a connec