THE WINTER JOURNEY 289 
“When we got a little light in the morning we found 
we were a little north of the two patches of moraine on 
Terror. Though we did not know it, we were on the point 
where the pressure runs up against Terror, and we could 
dimly see that we were right up against something. We 
started to try and clear it, but soon had an enormous ridge, 
blotting out the moraine and half Terror, rising like a 
great hill on our right. Bill said the only thing was to go 
right on and hope it would lower; all the time, however, 
there was a bad feeling that we might be putting any 
number of ridges between us and the mountain. After a 
while we tried to cross this one, but had to turn back for 
crevasses, both Bill and I putting a leg down. We went on 
for about twenty minutes and found a lower place, and 
turned to rise up it diagonally, and reached the top. Just 
over the top Birdie went right down a crevasse, which was 
about wide enough to take him. He was out of sight and 
out of reach from the surface, hanging in his harness. 
Bill went for his harness, I went for the bow of the sledge: 
Bill told me to get the Alpine rope and Birdie directed 
from below what we could do. We could not possibly haul 
him up as he was, for the sides of the crevasse were soft 
and he could not help himself.’’? 
““My helmet was so frozen up,” wrote Bowers, “that 
my head was encased in a solid block of ice, and I could 
not look down without inclining my whole body. As a 
result Bill stumbled one foot into a crevasse and | landed 
in it with both mine [even as I shouted a warning ?], the 
bridge gave way and down I went. Fortunately our sledge 
harness is made with a view to resisting this sort of thing, 
and there I hung with the bottomless pit below and the ice- 
crusted sides alongside, so narrow that to step over it 
would have been quite easy had I been able to see it. Bill 
said, ‘What do you want?’ I asked for an Alpine rope 
with a bowline for my foot: and taking up first the bow- 
line and then my harness they got me out.” ? Meanwhile 
_on the surface I lay over the crevasse and gave Birdie the 
bowline: he put it on his foot: then he raised his foot, 
1 My own diary. 2 Wilson. 3 Bowers. 
U 
