Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/96

boots and socks in such parts as would give us an entry to start getting in by. They were all very uncomfortable and our whole journey home was done on a very limited allowance of conscious sleep, while one or other of the party almost invariably dozed off and had a sleep over the cooker in the comparative comfort of sitting on a bag instead of lying inside it.

Wednesday, July 26, 1911.—We got in only half a day's march, as the wind continued until nearly all the daylight had gone. Leaving at about 2 p.m., we made 4½ miles in 3½ hours, and once more found ourselves on a very suspicious surface in the darkness, where we several times stepped into rotten lidded crevasses in smooth, wind-swept ice. We continued, however, feeling our way along by keeping always off hard ice-slopes and on the crustier deeper snow which characterises the hollows of the pressure ridges, which I believed we had once more fouled in the dark. We had no light, and no landmarks to guide us, except vague and indistinct silhouetted slopes ahead, which were always altering and whose distance and character it was impossible to judge. We never knew whether we were approaching a steep slope at close quarters or a long slope of Terror, miles away, and eventually we travelled on by the ear, and by the feel of the snow under our feet, for both the sound and the touch told one much of the chances of crevasses or of safe going. We continued thus in the dark in the hope that we were at any rate in the right direction.

The sky cleared when the wind fell, and the temperature