h some one was whacking
an empty tub.

It was Birdie's picture hat which made the trouble next day. "What do you
think of _that_ for a hat, sir?" I heard him say to Scott a few days
before we started, holding it out much as Lucille displays her latest
Paris model. Scott looked at it quietly for a time: "I'll tell you when
you come back, Birdie," he said. It was a complicated affair with all
kinds of nose-guards and buttons and lanyards: he thought he was going to
set it to suit the wind much as he would set the sails of a ship. We
spent a long time with our housewifes before this and other trips, for
everybody has their own ideas as to how to alter their clothing for the
best. When finished some looked neat, like Bill: others baggy, like Scott
or Seaman Evans: others rough and ready, like Oates and Bowers: a few
perhaps more rough than ready, and I will not mention names. Anyway
Birdie's hat became improper immediately it was well iced up.

"When we got a little light in the morning we found we were a little
north of the two patches of moraine on Terror. Though we did not know it,
we were on the point where the pressure runs up against Terror, and we
could dimly see that we were right up against something. We started to
try and clear it, but soon had an enormous ridge, blotting out the
moraine and half Terror, rising like a great hill on our right. Bill said
the only thing was to go right on and hope it would lower; all the time,
however, there was a bad feeling that we might be putting any number of
ridges between us and the mountain. After a while we tried to cross this
one, but had to turn back for crevasses, both Bill and I putting a leg
down. We went on for about twenty minutes and found a lower place, and
turned to rise up it diagonally, and reached the top. Just over the top
Birdie went right down a crevasse, which was about wide enough to take
him. He was out of sight and out of reach from the surface, hanging in
his harness. Bill went for his harness, I went for the bow of the sledge:
Bill told me to get the Alpine rope and Birdie directed from below what
we could do. We could not possibly haul him up as he was, for the sides
of the crevasse were soft and he could not help himself."[164]

"My helmet was so frozen up," wrote Bowers, "that my head was encased in
a solid block of ice, and I could not look down without inclining my
whole body. As a result Bill stumbled one foot into a crevasse and I
landed in it