top of
the ridge, much regretting that time would not allow us to examine the
other two large "nodules." Hurley was in the lead, lengthening his line
by thirty feet of alpine rope, but even then all three of us and the
sledge were often on the lid of a crevasse. Luckily, the lids were
fairly sound, and none of us went in beyond the waist. Finally, the
trail emerged on to ordinary sastrugi once more, where a halt was made
for lunch. We were all glad to have seen the place, but I think none of
us has any wish to see another like it.

That night, after following the magnetic needle towards the south-east,
we were fairly on the plateau at one hundred and forty miles, with
an altitude of four thousand four hundred feet. The dip, however, had
steadily decreased, standing now at 88 degrees 30'. There was some
consolation in the hope that a big, sudden rise was stored up for us
somewhere along the way ahead.

December 4 and 5 were fine days, giving only twenty-two miles, as we
met with a rough surface; a large quantity of very hard, razor-backed
sastrugi, generally about two feet high, like groined vaulting inverted,
on a small scale. Sledge and sledge-meter both had a very rough passage.
The sledge, for instance, balances itself on the top of a sastruga for a
moment, with an ominous bend in the runners, crashes down the slope and
jams its bow into the next one, from which it has to be lifted clear.

During this run the needle again misbehaved itself, changing its
direction some 85 degrees in ten miles, but by the night of the 5th
we were getting past the disturbed locality and the dip had increased
considerably.

For the first time on the trip the wind veered round to the south-east.
Snow had fallen overnight (December 5) and had drifted in long ramps
diagonally across the sastrugi. In two and a half hours we covered two
and a quarter miles, blindly blundering in an uncertain light among
crests and troughs and through piles of soft, new snow. Then we stopped;
Webb filling in the afternoon with a full set of dip observations.

That night the break-wind played its one possible trick. Waking on the
8th, we found that the heavy snowfall, with only a moderate wind, had
drifted us up. Of course Hurley and I, who slept on the 'outsides,' had
known it most of the night. Before we could extricate ourselves from the
bags Webb had to turn out from the middle to dig away the drift which
was weighing down the walls of the tent on top