1911] THE BARRIER ‘SHUDDER’ 43 
eiderdown, nights which would have been nightmares under ordi- 
nary circumstances, but which now put some new life into me. 
Bill was now having the worst nights—never sleeping as far as 
he knew. We were not much better. My new eiderdown was 
already sopping and as hard as iron: I never thawed out the 
greater part of my big bag. Even Birdie began to shiver in his 
bag. Sometimes we would have done a great deal not to stop 
marching and turn in: but we had to turn in each night for six 
or seven hours, rising about 5 A.M. | 
Our hands gave us more pain with cold than any other part, 
and this we all found to be the case. In the bags the hands, and 
half-mits and any other covering we liked to use got soaking wet, 
and the skin sodden like washerwomen’s hands. The result, on 
turning out, was that they were ready to freeze at once, and even 
the tying of the tent door became a real difficulty, the more so as 
the tie had become stiff as wire. Another difficulty in the bags 
was the freezing of the lanyards after one had tied them inside 
the bag. Nothing would loosen them save thawing, in one’s 
already painfully cold hands, and this was often awkward if one 
wished to turn out quickly. I believe the only satisfactory cover- 
ing for the hands in these conditions would be a bag of dry saen- 
negras, but we had only sufficient for our feet and it was not tried. 
Our feet gave us very little trouble indeed, except on the 
march, when they were often too cold for safety during slow and 
heavy plodding in soft snow. We always changed our footgear 
before eating our supper, and to this we attribute the fact that 
we seldom had cold feet at night, even at the worst. 
Saturday, July 29, 1911.—We got away before daylight and 
marched a good soft plod all day, making 6% miles. Subsidences 
were frequent, and at lunch the whole tent and contents, myself 
included, as I was cook for the day, dropped suddenly with a per- 
ceptible bump, and with so long and loud a reverberation all 
round that we all stood and listened for some minutes. Cherry 
said it started when his foot went through some snow under the 
top crust, not when he was digging through this crust. The cen- 
tral subsidence set off innumerable others all round and these 
others in continually widening circles, and the noise took quite 
two or three minutes to die away. 
We had no wind to-day, calm and southerly airs only, and a 
temp. ranging from — 42° A.M. to — 45°3° P.M. 
