This moraine was above us on our left, the twin peaks of the Knoll
were across the cup on our right; and here, 800 feet up the mountain
side, we pitched our last camp.
We had arrived.
What should we call our hut? How soon could we get our clothes and bags
dry? How would the blubber stove work? Would the penguins be there? "It
seems too good to be true, 19 days out. Surely seldom has any one been so
wet; our bags hardly possible to get into, our wind-clothes just frozen
boxes. Birdie's patent balaclava is like iron--it is wonderful how our
cares have vanished."[153]
It was evening, but we were so keen to begin that we went straight up to
the ridge above our camp, where the rock cropped out from the snow. We
found that most of it was _in situ_ but that there were plenty of
boulders, some gravel, and of course any amount of the icy snow which
fell away below us down to our tent, and the great pressure about a mile
beyond. Between us and that pressure, as we were to find out afterwards,
was a great ice-cliff. The pressure ridges, and the Great Ice Barrier
beyond, were at our feet; the Ross Sea edge but some four miles away. The
Emperors must be somewhere round that shoulder of the Knoll which hides
Cape Crozier itself from our view.
Our scheme was to build an igloo with rock walls, banked up with snow,
using a nine-foot sledge as a ridge beam, and a large sheet of green
Willesden canvas as a roof.
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