THE WINTER JOURNEY 254 
trate through the pressure to the Emperors’ Bay. And we 
had to do it in the dark. 
Terror Point, which we were approaching in the fog, is 
a short twenty miles from the Knoll, and ends in a long 
snow-tongue running out into the Barrier. ‘The way had 
been travelled a good many times in Discovery days and 
in daylight, and Wilson knew there was a narrow path, free 
from crevasses, which skirted along between the mountain 
and the pressure ridges running parallel to it. But it is one 
thing to walk along a corridor by day, and quite another to 
try to do so at night, especially when there are no walls by 
which you can correct your course—only crevasses. Any- 
way, Terror Point must be somewhere close to us now, 
and vaguely in front of us was that strip of snow, neither 
Barrier nor mountain, which was our only way forward. 
We began to realize, now that our eyes were more or 
less out of action, how much we could do with our feet and 
ears. The effect of walking in finnesko is much the same 
as walking in gloves, and you get a sense of touch which 
nothing else except bare feet could give you. Thus we 
could feel every small variation in surface, every crust 
through which our feet broke, every hardened patch below 
the soft snow. And soon we began to rely more and more 
upon the sound of our footsteps to tell us whether we were 
on crevasses or solid ground. From now onwards we were 
working among crevasses fairly constantly. I loathe them 
in full daylight when much can be done to avoid them, and 
when if you fall into them you can at any rate see where 
the sides are, which way they run and how best to scramble 
out; when your companions can see how to stop the sledge 
to which you are all attached by your harness; how most 
safely to hold the sledge when stopped ; how, if you are 
dangling fifteen feet down in a chasm, to work above you 
to get you up to the surface again. And then our clothes 
were generally something likeclothes. Even under the ideal 
conditions of good light, warmth and no wind, crevasses 
are beastly, whether you are pulling over a level and uni- 
form snow surface, never knowing what moment will find 
you dropping into some bottomless pit, or whether you 
