THE WINTER JOURNEY 279 
rocks which we had built into our walls fell upon us, and a 
sheet of drift came in. 
Birdie dived for his sleeping-bag and eventually got in, 
together with a terrible lot of drift. Bill also—but he was 
better off: I was already half into mine and all right, so I 
turned to help Bill. “‘ Get into your own,” he shouted, and 
when I continued to try and help him, he leaned over until 
his mouth was against my ear. “‘ Please, Cherry,” he said, 
and his voice was terribly anxious. I know he felt respons- 
ible: feared it was he who had brought us to this ghastly 
end. 
The next I knew was Bowers’ head across Bill’s body. 
“We're all right,” he yelled, and we answered in the 
affirmative. Despite the fact that we knew we only said 
so because we knew we were all wrong, this statement was 
helpful. Then we turned our bags over as far as possible, 
so that the bottom of the bag was uppermost and the flaps 
were more or less beneath us. And we lay and thought, 
and sometimes we sang. 
I suppose, wrote Wilson, we were all revolving plans 
to get back without a tent: and the one thing we had 
left was the floor-cloth upon which we were actually lying. 
Of course we could not speak at present, but later after 
the blizzard had stopped we discussed the possibility of 
digging a hole in the snow each night and covering it over 
with the floor-cloth. I do not think we had any idea that 
we could really get back in those temperatures in our 
present state of ice by such means, but no one ever hinted 
at such a thing. Birdie and Bill sang quite a lot of songs 
and hymns, snatches of which reached me every now and 
then, and I chimed in, somewhat feebly I suspect. Of 
course we were getting pretty badly drifted up. “I was 
resolved to keep warm,” wrote Bowers, ‘“‘and beneath my 
debris covering I paddled my feet and sang all the songs 
and hymns I| knew to pass the time. I could occasionally 
thump Bill, and as he still moved I knew he was alive 
all right—what a birthday for him!” Birdie was more 
drifted up than we, but at times we all had to hummock 
ourselves up to heave the snow off our bags. By opening 
