58 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [July 
boots and socks in such parts as would give us an entry 
to start getting in by. They were all very uncomfortable 
and our whole journey home was done on a very limited 
allowance of conscious sleep, while one or other of the 
party almost invariably dozed oif and had a sleep over 
the cooker in the comparative comfort of sitting on a 
bag instead of lying inside it. 
Wednesday^ July 26, 191 1.— We got in only half a 
day's march, as the wind continued until nearly all the 
daylight had gone. Leaving at about 2 p.m., we made 
4I miles in 3I- hours, and once more found ourselves on 
a very suspicious surface in the darkness, where we 
several times stepped into rotten lidded crevasses in 
smooth, wind-swept ice. We continued, however, feeling 
our way along by keeping always off hard ice-slopes 
and on the crustier deeper snow which characterises 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 
silhouetted 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. 
The sky cleared when the wind fell, and the temperature 
