We crawled along, and I can tell you it was exciting work in the more
than half darkness. At the end was a series of slopes full of crevasses,
and finally we got right in under the rock on to moraine, and here we had
to leave the sledge.
We roped up, and started to worry along under the cliffs, which had now
changed from ice to rock, and rose 800 feet above us. The tumult of
pressure which climbed against them showed no order here. Four hundred
miles of moving ice behind it had just tossed and twisted those giant
ridges until Job himself would have lacked words to reproach their Maker.
We scrambled over and under, hanging on with our axes, and cutting steps
where we could not find a foothold with our crampons. And always we got
towards the Emperor penguins, and it really began to look as if we were
going to do it this time, when we came up against a wall of ice which a
single glance told us we could never cross. One of the largest pressure
ridges had been thrown, end on, against the cliff. We seemed to be
stopped, when Bill found a black hole, something like a fox's earth,
disappearing into the bowels of the ice. We looked at it: "Well, here
goes!" he said, and put his head in, and disappeared. Bowers likewise. It
was a longish way, but quite possible to wriggle along, and presently I
found myself looking out of the other side with a deep gully below me,
the rock face on one hand and the ice on the other.
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