nd I believe the grease in the egg did
them good. When we got into the hollows under the ridge where we had to
cross, it was too dark to do anything but feel our way. We did so over
many crevasses, found the ridge and crept over it. Higher up we could see
more, but to follow our tracks soon became impossible, and we plugged
straight ahead and luckily found the slope down which we had come. All
day it had been blowing a nasty cold wind with a temperature between -20 deg.
and 30 deg., which we felt a good deal. Now it began to get worse. The
weather was getting thick and things did not look very nice when we
started up to find our tent. Soon it was blowing force 4, and soon we
missed our way entirely. We got right up above the patch of rocks which
marked our igloo and only found it after a good deal of search.

I have heard tell of an English officer at the Dardanelles who was left,
blinded, in No Man's Land between the English and Turkish trenches.
Moving only at night, and having no sense to tell him which were his own
trenches, he was fired at by Turk and English alike as he groped his
ghastly way to and from them. Thus he spent days and nights until, one
night, he crawled towards the English trenches, to be fired at as usual.
"Oh God! what can I do!" some one heard him say, and he was brought in.

Such extremity of suffering cannot be measured: madness or death may give
relief. But this I know: we on this journey were already beginning to
think of death as a friend. As we groped our way back that night,
sleepless, icy, and dog-tired in the dark and the wind and the drift, a
crevasse seemed almost a friendly gift.

"Things must improve," said Bill next day, "I think we reached bed-rock
last night." We hadn't, by a long way.

It was like this.

We moved into the igloo for the first time, for we had to save oil by
using our blubber stove if we were to have any left to travel home with,
and we did not wish to cover our tent with the oily black filth which the
use of blubber necessitates. The blizzard blew all night, and we were
covered with drift which came in through hundreds of leaks: in this
wind-swept place we had found no soft snow with which we could pack our
hard snow blocks. As we flensed some blubber from one of our penguin
skins the powdery drift covered everything we had.

Though uncomfortable this was nothing to worry about overmuch. Some of
the drift which the blizzard was bringing would collect to leewa