I903] ESCAPE FROM A CREVASSE 209 



lay between us and our goal. Feeling quite unsuspicious of 

 danger, we all three joined up our harness to our usual 

 positions ahead of the sledge ; this brought me in the middle 

 and a little in advance, with Lashly on my right and Evans 

 on my left. After we had been tramping on in this way for 

 a quarter of an hour the wind swept across from the south, 

 and as the sledge began to skid I told Lashly to pull wide 

 in order to steady it. He had scarcely moved out in response 

 to this order when Evans and I stepped on nothing and dis- 

 appeared from his view ; by a miracle he saved himself from 

 following, and sprang back with his whole weight on the trace ; 

 the sledge flashed by him and jumped the crevasse down which 

 we had gone, one side of its frame cracked through in the 

 jerk which followed, but the other side mercifully held. 

 Personally I remember absolutely nothing until I found myself 

 dangUng at the end of my trace with blue walls on either side 

 and a very horrid looking gulf below ; large ice-crystals 

 dislodged by our movements continued to shower down on 

 our heads. 



' As a first step I took off my goggles ; I then discovered 

 that Evans was hanging just above me. I asked him if he was 

 all right, and received a reassuring reply in his usual calm, 

 matter-of-fact tones. Meanwhile I groped about on every 

 side with my cramponed feet, only to find everywhere the 

 same slippery smooth wall. But my struggles had set me 

 swinging, and at one end of a swing my leg suddenly struck a 

 projection. In a moment I had turned, and saw at a glance 

 that by raising myself I could get foothold on it ; with the 

 next swing I clutched it with my steel-shod feet, and after a 

 short struggle succeeded in partly transferring my weight to it. 

 In this position, with my feet firmly planted and my balance 

 maintained by my harness, I could look about me. 



' I found myself standing on a thin shaft of ice which was 

 wedged between the walls of the chasm— how it came there I 

 cannot imagine, but its position was wholly providential ; to 

 the right or left, above or below, there was not the vestige of 

 another such support — nothing, in fact, but the smooth walls 



VOL. II. P 



