i9l 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 l / 2 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. 



