154 WITH SCOTT : THE SILVER LINING 



and the thin leather lining froze as hard as steel and so pro- 

 tected my foot. For days a loose boot-nail which had acci- 

 dentally 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 



constvic Ho n 



fVozen fight" 



"Qlj/ lor'S 



C Onsfric tTbn 



3Ke~1T)orJaho|oay 0-f -frozen Ok"i-bo ^S. 

 15 Z II 



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 evi- 

 dently 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 distance 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 pan- 

 cakes were surging about, so there was obviously no time to 



