s
I stood--perhaps fifteen seconds. For four hours I had to pull with my
head stuck up, and from that time we all took care to bend down into a
pulling position before being frozen in.

By now we had realized that we must reverse the usual sledging routine
and do everything slowly, wearing when possible the fur mitts which
fitted over our woollen mitts, and always stopping whatever we were
doing, directly we felt that any part of us was getting frozen, until the
circulation was restored. Henceforward it was common for one or other of
us to leave the other two to continue the camp work while he stamped
about in the snow, beat his arms, or nursed some exposed part. But we
could not restore the circulation of our feet like this--the only way
then was to camp and get some hot water into ourselves before we took our
foot-gear off. The difficulty was to know whether our feet were frozen or
not, for the only thing we knew for certain was that we had lost all
feeling in them. Wilson's knowledge as a doctor came in here: many a time
he had to decide from our descriptions of our feet whether to camp or to
go on for another hour. A wrong decision meant disaster, for if one of us
had been crippled the whole party would have been placed in great
difficulties. Probably we should all have died.

On June 29 the temperature was -50 deg. all day and there was sometimes a
light breeze which was inclined to frost-bite our faces and hands. Owing
to the weight of our two sledges and the bad surface our pace was not
more than a slow and very heavy plod: at our lunch camp Wilson had the
heel and sole of one foot frost-bitten, and I had two big toes. Bowers
was never worried by frost-bitten feet.

That night was very cold, the temperature falling to -66 deg., and it was
-55 deg. at breakfast on June 30. We had not shipped the eider-down linings
to our sleeping-bags, in order to keep them dry as long as possible. My
own fur bag was too big for me, and throughout this journey was more
difficult to thaw out than the other two: on the other hand, it never
split, as did Bill's.

We were now getting into that cold bay which lies between the Hut Point
Peninsula and Terror Point. It was known from old Discovery days that the
Barrier winds are deflected from this area, pouring out into McMurdo
Sound behind us, and into the Ross Sea at Cape Crozier in front. In
consequence of the lack of high winds the surface of the snow is never
swept and hardened