DIFFICULTIES AHEAD 49 



and had his work cut out to keep ahead of the eager 

 animals. One would never have thought we were 

 between 85° and 86° S.; the heat was positively disagree- 

 able, and, although lightly clad, we sweated as if we 

 were running races in the tropics. We were ascending 

 rapidly, but, in spite of the sudden change of pressure, 

 we did not j^et experience any difficulty of breathing, 

 headache, or other unpleasant results. That these 

 sensations would make their appearance in due course 

 was, however, a matter of which we could be certain. 

 Shackleton's description of his march on the plateau, 

 when headache of the most violent and unpleasant kind 

 was the order of the day, was fresh in the memory of 

 all of us. 



In a comparatively short time we reached the ledge 

 in the glacier that we had noticed a long way off; it 

 was not quite flat, but sloped slightly towards the edge. 

 When we came to the place to which Hanssen and 

 Bjaaland had carried their reconnaissance on the previous 

 evening, we had a very fine prospect of the further 

 course of the glacier. To continue along it was an 

 impossibility; it consisted here — between the two vast 

 mountains — of nothing but crevasse after crevasse, so 

 huge and ugly that we were forced to conclude that 

 our further advance that way was barred. Over by 

 Fridtjof Nansen we could not go; this mountain 

 here rose perpendicularly, in parts quite bare, and 

 formed with the glacier a surface so wild and cut up 



