2 deg., and there was
some drift. This was pretty bad, but luckily the wind dropped to a light
breeze by the time we were ready to start the next morning (July 2). The
temperature was then -60 deg., and continued so all day, falling lower in the
evening. At 4 P.M. we watched a bank of fog form over the peninsula to
our left and noticed at the same time that our frozen mitts thawed out on
our hands, and the outlines of the land as shown by the stars became
obscured. We made 21/2 miles with the usual relaying, and camped at 8 P.M.
with the temperature -65 deg.. It really was a terrible march, and parts of
both my feet were frozen at lunch. After supper I pricked six or seven of
the worst blisters, and the relief was considerable.

I have met with amusement people who say, "Oh, we had minus fifty
temperatures in Canada; they didn't worry _me_," or "I've been down to
minus sixty something in Siberia." And then you find that they had nice
dry clothing, a nice night's sleep in a nice aired bed, and had just
walked out after lunch for a few minutes from a nice warm hut or an
overheated train. And they look back upon it as an experience to be
remembered. Well! of course as an experience of cold this can only be
compared to eating a vanilla ice with hot chocolate cream after an
excellent dinner at Claridge's. But in our present state we began to look
upon minus fifties as a luxury which we did not often get.

That evening, for the first time, we discarded our naked candle in
favour of the rising moon. We had started before the moon on purpose, but
as we shall see she gave us little light. However, we owed our escape
from a very sticky death to her on one occasion.

It was a little later on when we were among crevasses, with Terror above
us, but invisible, somewhere on our left, and the Barrier pressure on our
right. We were quite lost in the darkness, and only knew that we were
running downhill, the sledge almost catching our heels. There had been no
light all day, clouds obscured the moon, we had not seen her since
yesterday. And quite suddenly a little patch of clear sky drifted, as it
were, over her face, and she showed us three paces ahead a great crevasse
with just a shining icy lid not much thicker than glass. We should all
have walked into it, and the sledge would certainly have followed us
down. After that I felt we had a chance of pulling through: God could not
be so cruel as to have saved us just to prolong our agony.