2944 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
only one which may be said with certainty to make for suc- 
cess, self-control. 
We spent the next day—it was July 21—in collect- 
ing every scrap of soft snow we could find and packing 
it into the crevasses between our hard snow blocks. It 
was a pitifully small amount but we could see no cracks 
when we had finished. To counteract the lifting tendency 
the wind had on our roof we cut some great flat hard 
snow blocks and laid them on the canvas top to steady it 
against the sledge which formed the ridge support. We 
also pitched our tent outside the igloo door. Both tent and 
igloo were therefore eight or nine hundred feet up Terror: 
both were below an outcrop of rocks from which the moun- 
tain fell steeply to the Barrier behind us, and from this 
direction came the blizzards. In front of us the slope fell 
for a mile or more down to the ice-cliffs, so wind-swept that 
we had to wear crampons to walk upon it. Most of the tent 
was in the lee of the igloo, but the cap of it came over the 
igloo roof, while a segment of the tent itself jutted out 
beyond the igloo wall. 
That night we took much of our gear into the tent and 
lighted the blubber stove. I always mistrusted that stove, 
and every moment I expected it to flare up and burn the 
tent. But the heat it gave, as it burned furiously, with the 
double lining of the tent to contain it, was considerable. 
It did not matter, except for a routine which we never 
managed to keep, whether we started to thaw our way into 
our frozen sleeping-bags at 4 in the morning or 4 in the 
afternoon. I think we must have turned in during the 
afternoon of that Friday, leaving the cooker, our finnesko, 
a deal of our foot-gear, Bowers’ bag of personal gear, and 
many other thingsinthetent. I expect we left the blubber 
stove there too, for it was quite useless at present to try and 
warm the igloo. The tent floor-cloth was under our sleep- 
ing-bags in the igloo. 
“Things must improve,’’ said Bill. After all there was 
much for which to be thankful. I don’t think anybody 
could have made a better igloo with the hard snow blocks 
and rocks which were all we had: we would get it air-tight © 
