THE WINTER JOURNEY 255 
the sledge, tied them together, and thus roped walked up- 
wards on that ice. Themoon wasshowing a ghastly ragged 
mountainous edge above us in the fog, and as we rose we 
found that we were on a pressure ridge. We stopped, 
looked at one another, and then damg—right under our 
feet. More bangs, and creaks and groans ; for that ice was 
moving and splitting like glass. The cracks went off all 
round us, and some of them ran along for hundreds of 
yards. Afterwards we got used to it, but at first the effect 
was very jumpy. From first to last during this journey we 
had plenty of variety and none of that monotony which 
is inevitable in sledging over long distances of Barrier in 
summer. Only the long shivering fits following close one 
after the other all the time we lay in our dreadful sleeping- 
bags, hour after hour and night after night in those tem- 
peratures—they were as monotonous as could be. Later 
we got frost-bitten even as we lay in our sleeping-bags. 
Things are getting pretty bad when you get frost-bitten in 
your bag. 
There was only a glow where the moon was ; we stood 
in a moonlit fog, and this was sufficient to show the edge 
of another ridge ahead, and yet another on our left. We 
were utterly bewildered. The deep booming of the ice 
continued, and it may be that the tide has something to do 
with this, though we were many miles from the ordinary 
coastal ice. We went back, toggled up to our sledges again 
and pulled in what we thought was the right direction, 
always with that feeling that the earth may open under- 
neath your feet which you have in crevassed areas. But all 
we found were more mounds and banks of snow and ice, 
into which we almost ran before we saw them. We were 
clearly lost. It was near midnight, and I wrote, ‘“‘ it may 
be the pressure ridges or it may be Terror, it is impos- 
sible to say,—and I should think it is impossible to move 
till it clears. We were steering N.E. when we got here 
and returned S.W. till we seemed to be in a hollow and 
camped.” 
The temperature had been rising from — 36° at II A.M. 
and it was now —27°; snow was falling and nothing 
