To reach the glacier we were faced with two alternatives:  either to march right round the icefalls, as we had done coming south, and thus waste three whole days, or to take our lives in our hands and attempt to get the sledge slap over the falls.  This would mean facing tremendous drops, which might end in a catastrophe.  The discussion was very short-lived, and with rather a sinking feeling the descent of the great ice falls was commenced.  We packed our ski on the sledge, attached spiked crampons to our finnesko, and guided the sledge through the maze of hummocks and crevasses.

The travelling surface was wind-swept and consequently too easy, for the sledge would charge down a slippery slope of blue ice and capsize time after time.  In places the way became so steep that our united efforts were needed to avoid the yawning chasms which beset our path.  We were compelled to remain attached to the sledge by our harness, for otherwise there was always the danger of our slipping into one of the very crevasses that we were keeping the sledge clear of, and in this manner, with the jumping and jolting of that awful descent, frequent cases of over-running occurred, the sledge fouling our traces and whisking us off our feet.  We encountered fall after fall, bruises, cuts, and abrasions were sustained, but we vied with one another in bringing all our grit and patience to bear; scarcely a complaint was heard, although one or other of us would be driven almost sick with pain as the sledge cannoned into this or that man’s heel with a thud that made the victim clench his teeth to avoid crying out.

The whole forenoon we worked down towards the more even surface of the great glacier itself, but the actual descent of the steep part of the Shackleton Icefalls was accomplished in half an hour.  We came down many hundred feet in that time.

None of us can ever forget that exciting descent.  The speed of the sledge at one point must have been 60 miles an hour.  We glissaded down a steep blue ice slope; to brake was impossible, for the sledge had taken charge.  One or other of us may have attempted to check the sledge with his foot, but to stop it in any way would have meant a broken leg.  We held on for our lives, lying face downwards on the sledge.  Suddenly it seemed to spring into the air, we had left the ice and shot over one yawning crevasse before we had known of its existence almost—­I do not imagine we were more than a second in the air, but in that brief space of time I looked at Crean, who raised his eyebrows as if to say, “What next!” Then we crashed on to the ice ridge beyond this crevasse, the sledge capsized and rolled over and over, dragging us three with it until it came to a standstill.