THE WINTER JOURNEY 241 
deer bag without the lining of eider-down which we each 
carried. For me it was a very bad night: a succession 
of shivering fits which I was quite unable to stop, and 
which took possession of my body for many minutes at 
a time until I thought my back would break, such was 
the strain placed upon it. They talk of chattering teeth : 
but when your body chatters you may call yourself cold. I 
can only compare the strain to that which I have been un- 
fortunate enough to see in a case of lock-jaw. One of my 
big toes was frost-bitten, but I do not know for how long. 
Wilson was fairly comfortable in his smaller bag, and 
Bowers was snoring loudly. The minimum temperature 
that night as taken under the sledge was —69°; and as 
taken on the sledge was -75°. That is a hundred and 
seven degrees of frost. 
We did the same relay work on July 1, but found the 
pulling still harder; and it was all that we could do to move 
the one sledge forward. From now onwards Wilson and 
I, but not to the same extent Bowers, experienced a curious 
optical delusion when returning in our tracks for the second 
sledge. | have said that we found our way back by the 
light of a candle, and we found it necessary to go back in 
our same footprints. These holes became to our tired brains 
not depressions but elevations : hummocks over which we 
stepped, raising our feet painfully and draggingly. And 
then we remembered, and said what fools we were, and 
for a while we compelled ourselves to walk through these 
phantom hills. But it was no lasting good, and as the days 
passed we realized that we must suffer this absurdity, for 
we could not do anything else. But of course it took it out 
of us. 
During these days the blisters on my fingers were very 
painful. Long before my hands were frost-bitten, or indeed 
anything but cold, which was of course a normal thing, the 
matter inside these big blisters, which rose all down my 
fingers with only a skin between them, was frozen into ice. 
To handle the cooking gear or the food bags was agony ; 
to start the primus was worse; and when, one day, I was 
able to prick six or seven of the blisters after supper and 
R 
