"Get into your
own," he shouted, and when I continued to try and help him, he leaned
over until his mouth was against my ear. "_Please_, Cherry," he said, and
his voice was terribly anxious. I know he felt responsible: feared it was
he who had brought us to this ghastly end.
The next I knew was Bowers' head across Bill's body. "We're all right,"
he yelled, and we answered in the affirmative. Despite the fact that we
knew we only said so because we knew we were all wrong, this statement
was helpful. Then we turned our bags over as far as possible, so that the
bottom of the bag was uppermost and the flaps were more or less beneath
us. And we lay and thought, and sometimes we sang.
I suppose, wrote Wilson, we were all revolving plans to get back without
a tent: and the one thing we had left was the floor-cloth upon which we
were actually lying. Of course we could not speak at present, but later
after the blizzard had stopped we discussed the possibility of digging a
hole in the snow each night and covering it over with the floor-cloth. I
do not think we had any idea that we could really get back in those
temperatures in our present state of ice by such means, but no one ever
hinted at such a thing. Birdie and Bill sang quite a lot of songs and
hymns, snatches of which reached me every now and then, and I chimed in,
somewhat feebly I suspect.
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