390 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Sept. 



disappeared down a formidable crevasse, and to my relief the 

 boatswain was at the end of the trace. 



' I soon hauled him up and inquired if he was hurt, to 



which, being a man of few words, his only reply was, " D n 



the dog ! " from which I gathered that " Nigger " had tried to 

 cut a corner and so pulled his leader at the wrong moment, 

 and, incidentally, that the boatswain wasn't much hurt. This 

 evening the boatswain has shown me his harness ; one strand 

 was cut clean through where it fell across the ice-edge. Alto- 

 gether he had a pretty close call. 



'After this accident we joined our dog teams, and, loath 

 to give up the march, pushed on again. About half an hour 

 later there was another shout, and, looking round, I found 

 this time that it was not a man, but a sledge, that had dis- 

 appeared. It was the last of the four, and I found it hanging 

 vertically up and down in an ugly-looking chasm. To the 

 credit of our packing, although it had fallen with a jerk into 

 this uncomfortable position, not a single thing had come off. 

 It was too heavy for us to haul up as it was, so, after some 

 consultation, our indefatigable boatswain suggested that he 

 should be let down to unpack it. He was therefore slung 

 with one end of our Alpine rope, whilst the other was used 

 for hauling up the various packages. It must have been a 

 mighty cold job, but at last all the load was got up, and the 

 lightened sledge soon followed. After getting everything in 

 order again we found that we had sustained no greater damage 

 than a broken ski. 



' After this incident we thought it would be wise to treat 

 these numerous crevasses with more respect, so on proceed- 

 ing we roped ourselves together, and whilst I went ahead 

 the boatswain led the dog-team and Shackleton brought 

 up the rear to look after things in general. But we had 

 not gone far like this when the light became thoroughly 

 bad ; we could see nothing at all under foot, and have 

 been obliged to camp early. The effect of this light on our 

 surroundings is very curious, making everything appear of 

 gigantic size ; the smallest wind-furrow looms up like a heavy 



