FROST-BITE 



glacier and marched close to the rocks, we felt the heat 

 much more, for the rocks acted as radiators, and this 

 experience weighed with me in deciding to leave all the 

 spare clotliing and equipment at the Upper Glacier 

 Depot, about seven thousand feet up. We did not 

 expect to have to climb much higher, but, as the reader 

 knows, we did not reach the plateau until we had 

 climbed over ten thousand feet above sea-level, and so 

 we felt the cold extremely. Our wind-proof Burberry 

 clothing had become thin by this time, and had been 

 patched in many places in consequence of having been 

 torn on the sharp ice. The wind got in through a tear 

 in my Burberry trousers one day and I was frost-bitten 

 on the under part of the knee. This frost-bite developed 

 into an open wound, into which the wool from my 

 underclothing worked, and I had finally to perform a 

 rather painful operation with a knife before the wound 

 would heal. We were continually being frost-bitten 

 up on the plateau, and when our boots had begun to 

 give out and we were practically marching on the senne- 

 grass inside the finnesko, our heels got frost-bitten. My 

 heels burst when we got on to hard stuff, and for some 

 time my socks were caked with blood at the end of 

 every day's march. Finally Marshall put some " New- 

 skin " on a pad, and that stuck on well until the cracks 

 had healed. The scars are likely to remxain with me. 

 In the very cold days, when our strength had begun to 

 decrease, we found great difficulty in hoisting the sail 

 on our sledge, for when we lifted our arms above our 

 heads in order to adjust the sail, the blood ran from our 

 fingers and they promptly froze. Ten minutes or a 

 quarter of an hour sometimes elapsed before we could 

 get the sledge properly rigged. Our troubles with frost- 

 bite were no doubt due in a measure to the lightness 

 of our clothing, but there was compensation in the 



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