BROWNING THE BOOTS' 



139 



ankle and raised great blisters and even boils in Debenham's case. 

 I had no sole on the right foot, but within the next day or so 

 the temperature fell considerably and the thin leather lining 

 froze as hard as steel and so protected my foot. For days a 

 loose boot-nail which had accidentally been pressed sideways into 

 the sole when it was wet clung like a leech! 



Each morning we had a painful ceremony when it was 

 necessary to don our frozen boots. Remarks more fervid than 

 polite flew about the tent, and some of us found that quotations 

 from the poet philosopher lubricated the process. 



' . . . . Gritstone, gritstone a-crumble ; 

 Clammy squares that sweat, as if the corpse they keep 

 Were oozing through ' 



was supposed to be a very potent incantation. We carried no 

 blacking, but this ceremony was called ' Browning the Boots.' 



Open water washed the face of the Blue Glacier. Black 

 snaky heads reminding me of prehistoric plesiosaurs' could 

 be seen darting about amid the brash ice. They were Emperor 

 penguins, which swim with their bodies submerged. 



To the south of us stretched the sea ice, which was evidently 

 rotten and ready to move north. Beyond the Blue Glacier on 

 the right stretched a broad fringe of moraine which extended 

 fairly continuously along the north side of the Koettlitz Glacier. 

 Immediately ahead of us was a fifty-foot ice cliff, but some dis- 

 tance to the south we found a lower place and managed with 

 the Alpine rope to lower the sledges down to the sea ice. We 

 crossed the ' pressure ice ' where great cakes had been up- 

 ended to form a frozen rampart and reached a good sledging 

 surface at last. Near by was a great pool of water containing 

 many seals, where jostling ice pancakes were surging about, so 

 there was obviously no time to lose. We pushed gaily south and 

 camped that night in a little gravelly dell among the moraines. 



All night long we could hear the groaning of the sea ice as 

 it ground on the coast. A most melancholy sound, composed 

 of varying notes of which I wrote an analysis in the by no means 

 stilly watches of the night as follows : * A tiger's growling purr, 

 plus the sough and whistle of the wind through a draughty house, 

 with an undercurrent of the creak due to hard breeches rubbing 

 on a new leather saddle.' 



