288 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
rible light, blundering in among pressure and up on to the 
slopes of Terror. The temperature dropped from — 21° to 
— 45°. “Several times [we] stepped into rotten-lidded 
crevasses in smooth wind-swept ice. We continued, how- 
ever, feeling our way along by keeping always off hard ice- 
slopes and on the crustier deeper snow which characterizes 
the hollows of the pressure ridges, which I believed we had 
once more fouled in the dark. We had no light, and no 
landmarks to guide us, except vague and indistinct sil- 
houetted slopes ahead, which were always altering and 
whose distance and character it was impossible to judge. 
We never knew whether we were approaching a steep 
slope at close quarters or a long slope of Terror, miles 
away, and eventually we travelled on by the ear, and by the 
feel of the snow under our feet, for both the sound and the 
touch told one much of the chances of crevasses or of safe 
going. We continued thus in the dark in the hope that we 
were at any rate in the right direction.””+ And then we 
camped after getting into a bunch of crevasses, completely 
lost. Bill said, “‘ At any rate I think we are well clear of 
the pressure.” But there were pressure pops all night, as 
though some one was whacking an empty tub. 
It was Birdie’s picture hat which made the trouble next 
day. ‘‘What do you think of chaz for a hat, sir?”’ I heard 
him say to Scott a few days before we started, holding it 
out much as Lucille displays her latest Paris model. Scott 
looked at it quietly for a time: “Ill tell you when you 
come back, Birdie,” he said. It was a complicated affair 
with all kinds of nose-guards and buttons and lanyards: 
he thought he was going to set it to suit the wind much as 
he would set the sails of a ship. We spent a long time with 
our housewifes before this and other trips, for everybody 
has their own ideas as to how to alter their clothing for the 
best. When finished some looked neat, like Bill: others 
baggy, like Scott or Seaman Evans: others rough and 
ready, like Oates and Bowers: a few perhaps more rough 
than ready, and I will not mention names. Anyway Birdie’s 
hat became improper immediately it was well iced up. 
1 Wilson in Scote’s Last Expedition, vol. ii. p. 58. 
