il. We started with 6 one-gallon tins (those tins
Scott had criticized), and we had now used four of them. At first we said
we must have at least two one-gallon tins with which to go back; but by
now our estimate had come down to one full gallon tin, and two full
primus lamps. Our sleeping-bags were awful. It took me, even as early in
the journey as this, an hour of pushing and thumping and cramp every
night to thaw out enough of mine to get into it at all. Even that was not
so bad as lying in them when we got there.

Only -35 deg. but "a very bad night" according to my diary. We got away in
good time, but it was a ghastly day and my nerves were quivering at the
end, for we could not find that straight and narrow way which led between
the crevasses on either hand. Time after time we found we were out of our
course by the sudden fall of the ground beneath our feet--in we went and
then--"are we too far right?"--nobody knows--"well let's try nearer in to
the mountain," and so forth! "By hard slogging 23/4 miles this
morning--then on in thick gloom which suddenly lifted and we found
ourselves under a huge great mountain of pressure ridge looking black in
shadow. We went on, bending to the left, when Bill fell and put his arm
into a crevasse. We went over this and another, and some time after got
somewhere up to the left, and both Bill and I put a foot into a crevasse.
We sounded all about and everywhere was hollow, and so we ran the sledge
down over it and all was well."[152] Once we got right into the pressure
and took a longish time to get out again. Bill lengthened his trace out
with the Alpine rope now and often afterwards so he found the crevasses
well ahead of us and the sledge: nice for us but not so nice for Bill.
Crevasses in the dark _do_ put your nerves on edge.

When we started next morning (July 15) we could see on our left front and
more or less on top of us the Knoll, which is a big hill whose
precipitous cliffs to seaward form Cape Crozier. The sides of it sloped
down towards us, and pressing against its ice-cliffs on ahead were miles
and miles of great pressure ridges, along which we had travelled, and
which hemmed us in. Mount Terror rose ten thousand feet high on our left,
and was connected with the Knoll by a great cup-like drift of
wind-polished snow. The slope of this in one place runs gently out on to
the corridor along which we had sledged, and here we turned and started
to pull our sledges up. There