We went on for about twenty minutes and found a lower place, and
turned to rise up it diagonally, and reached the top. Just over the top
Birdie went right down a crevasse, which was about wide enough to take
him. He was out of sight and out of reach from the surface, hanging in
his harness. Bill went for his harness, I went for the bow of the sledge:
Bill told me to get the Alpine rope and Birdie directed from below what
we could do. We could not possibly haul him up as he was, for the sides
of the crevasse were soft and he could not help himself."[164]
"My helmet was so frozen up," wrote Bowers, "that my head was encased in
a solid block of ice, and I could not look down without inclining my
whole body. As a result Bill stumbled one foot into a crevasse and I
landed in it with both mine [even as I shouted a warning[165] ], the
bridge gave way and down I went. Fortunately our sledge harness is made
with a view to resisting this sort of thing, and there I hung with the
bottomless pit below and the ice-crusted sides alongside, so narrow that
to step over it would have been quite easy had I been able to see it.
Bill said, 'What do you want?' I asked for an Alpine rope with a bowline
for my foot: and taking up first the bowline and then my harness they got
me out."[166] Meanwhile on the surface I lay over the crevasse and gave
Birdie the bowline: he put it on his foot: then he raised his foot,
giving me some slack: I held the rope while he raised himself on his
foot, thus giving Bill some slack on the harness: Bill then held the
harness, allowing Birdie to raise his foot and give me some slack again.
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