THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



but completely gone, so biting was the cold, before he 

 reached the haven of the sleeping-bag. He and Adams 

 crawled in, and then, as the bag had been much twisted 

 up and drifted with snow while Marshall had been 

 holding it down, Adams and Marshall got out to try 

 and straighten it out. The attempt was not very 

 successful, as they were numb with cold and the bag, 

 with only one person inside, blew about, so they got 

 into it again. Shortly afterwards Adams made another 

 attempt, and whilst he was working at it the wind 

 got inside the bag, blowing it open right way up. Adams 

 promptly got in again, and the adventure thus ended 

 satisfactorily. The men could do nothing now but lie 

 low whilst the blizzard lasted. At times they munched 

 a plasmon biscuit or some chocolate. They had 

 nothing to drink all that day, March 8, and during the 

 following night, as it would have been impossible to 

 have kept a lamp alight to thaw out the snow. They 

 got some sleep during the night in spite of the storm. 

 On awaking at 4 a.m. the following day, the travellers 

 found that the blizzard was over, so, after breakfast, they 

 started away again at about 5.30 a.m. 



The angle of ascent was now steeper than ever, 

 being thirty-four degrees, that is, a rise of 1 in As 

 the hard snow slopes were much too steep to climb 

 without cutting steps with an ice-axe, they kept as 

 much as possible to the bare rocks. Occasionally 

 the arete would terminate upwards in a large snow 

 slope, and when this was the case they cut steps across 

 the slope to any other bare rocks which seemed 

 to persist for some distance in an upward direction. 

 Brocklehurst, who was wearing ski-boots, began to 

 feel the cold attacking his feet, but did not think it 

 was serious enough to change into finnesko. At 

 noon they found a fair camping-ground, and made some 



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