Birdie brought two tins of sweets away with him. One we had to celebrate
our arrival at the Knoll: this was the second, of which we knew nothing,
and which was for Bill's birthday, the next day. We started eating them
on Saturday, however, and the tin came in useful to Bill afterwards.
To get that gear in we fought against solid walls of black snow which
flowed past us and tried to hurl us down the slope. Once started nothing
could have stopped us. I saw Birdie knocked over once, but he clawed his
way back just in time. Having passed everything we could find in to Bill,
we got back into the igloo, and started to collect things together,
including our very dishevelled minds.
There was no doubt that we were in the devil of a mess, and it was not
altogether our fault. We had had to put our igloo more or less where we
could get rocks with which to build it. Very naturally we had given both
our tent and igloo all the shelter we could from the full force of the
wind, and now it seemed we were in danger not because they were in the
wind, but because they were not sufficiently in it. The main force of the
hurricane, deflected by the ridge behind, fled over our heads and
appeared to form by suction a vacuum below. Our tent had either been
sucked upwards into this, or had been blown away because some of it was
in the wind while some of it was not.
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