t under
the level of the top of the hill, hoping that here in the lee of the
ridge we might escape a good deal of the tremendous winds which we knew
were common. Birdie gathered rocks from over the hill, nothing was too
big for him; Bill did the banking up outside while I built the wall with
the boulders. The rocks were good, the snow, however, was blown so hard
as to be practically ice; a pick made little impression upon it, and the
only way was to chip out big blocks gradually with the small shovel. The
gravel was scanty, but good when there was any. Altogether things looked
very hopeful when we turned in to the tent some 150 yards down the slope,
having done about half one of the long walls."[154]

The view from eight hundred feet up the mountain was magnificent and I
got my spectacles out and cleared the ice away time after time to look.
To the east a great field of pressure ridges below, looking in the
moonlight as if giants had been ploughing with ploughs which made furrows
fifty or sixty feet deep: these ran right up to the Barrier edge, and
beyond was the frozen Ross Sea, lying flat, white and peaceful as though
such things as blizzards were unknown. To the north and north-east the
Knoll. Behind us Mount Terror on which we stood, and over all the grey
limitless Barrier seemed to cast a spell of cold immensity, vague,
ponderous, a breeding-place of wind and drift and darkness. God! What a
place!

"There was now little moonlight or daylight, but for the next forty-eight
hours we used both to their utmost, being up at all times by day and
night, and often working on when there was great difficulty in seeing
anything; digging by the light of the hurricane lamp. By the end of two
days we had the walls built, and banked up to one or two feet from the
top; we were to fit the roof cloth close before banking up the rest. The
great difficulty in banking was the hardness of the snow, it being
impossible to fill in the cracks between the blocks which were more like
paving-stones than anything else. The door was in, being a triangular
tent doorway, with flaps which we built close in to the walls, cementing
it with snow and rocks. The top folded over a plank and the bottom was
dug into the ground."[155]

Birdie was very disappointed that we could not finish the whole thing
that day: he was nearly angry about it, but there was a lot to do yet and
we were tired out. We turned out early the next morning (Tuesday 18th) to
try