254 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
are rushing for the Alpine rope and the sledge, to help 
some companion who has disappeared. I dream some- 
times now of bad days we had on the Beardmore and else- 
where, when men were dropping through to be caught up 
and hang at the full length of the harnesses and toggles 
many times in an hour. On the same sledge as myself on 
the Beardmore one man went down once head first, and 
another eight times to the length of his harness in 25 
minutes. And always you wondered whether your harness 
was going to hold when the jerk came. But those days were 
a Sunday School treat compared to our days of blind-man’s 
buff with the Emperor penguins among the crevasses of 
Cape Crozier. 
Our troubles were greatly increased by the state of our 
clothes. If we had been dressed in lead we should have 
been able to move our arms and necks and heads more 
easily than we could now. Ifthe same amount of icing had 
extended to our legs I believe we should still be there, 
standing unable to move: but happily the forks of our 
trousers still remained movable. To get into our canvas 
harnesses was the most absurd business. Quite in the 
early days of our journey we met with this difficulty, and 
somewhat foolishly decided not to take off our harness for 
lunch. The harnesses thawed in the tent, and froze back 
as hard as boards. Likewise our clothing was hard as 
boards and stuck out from our bodies in every imaginable 
fold and angle. To fit one board over the other required 
the united efforts of the would-be wearer and his two com- 
panions, and the process had to be repeated for each one of 
us twice a day. Goodness knows how long it took; but it 
cannot have been less than five minutes’ thumping at each 
man. 
As we approached Terror Point in the fog we sensed 
that we had risen and fallen over several rises. Every now 
and then we felt hard slippery snow under our feet. Every 
now and then our feet went through crusts in the surface. 
And then quite suddenly, vague, indefinable, monstrous, 
there loomed a something ahead. I remember havinga feel- 
ing as of ghosts about as we untoggled our harnesses from 
