How we ever escaped entirely uninjured is beyond me to explain.  When we had recovered our breath we examined ourselves and our sledge.  One of my ski-sticks had caught on a piece of ice during our headlong flight and torn itself from the sledge.  It rolled into the great blue-black chasm over which we had come, and its fate made me feel quite cold when I thought of what might have happened to us.  When my heart had stopped beating so rapidly from fright, and I had recovered enough to look round, I realised that we were practically back on the Beardmore again, and that our bold escapade had saved us three days’ solid foot slogging and that amount of food.  So we pitched our little tent, had a good filling meal, and then, delighted with our progress, we marched on until 8 p.m.  That night in our sleeping-bags we felt like three bruised pears, but being in pretty hard condition in those days, our bruises and slight cuts in no way kept us from hours of perfect, contented slumber.

I see in my diary for January 13, 1912, I have noted that we came down 2000 feet, but I doubt if it really was as much—­we then had no means of measuring.

January 14 found us up at 5.45 (really only 4.45, because in order not to make my seamen companions anxious I handicapped my watch after first day’s homeward march, putting the hands on one hour each morning before rising, and back when I got the chance, so that we marched from 10 to 12 hours a day).  We hauled our sledge for six hours until we reached the Upper Glacier Depot under Mount Darwin.  Here we took 3 1/2 days’ stores as arranged, and after sorting up and repacking the depot had lunch and away down the Glacier, camping at 7.30 p.m. off Buckley Island, fairly close to the land.  Temperature rose above zero that night.

Next day we were away at 8 a.m. with our crampons on, we came down several steep ice slopes, blue ice like glass, Lashly hauling ahead and Crean and I holding on to the sledge.  We bumped a lot, and occasionally the sledge capsized.  But we made good nearly 22 miles.  We covered between 18 and 20 miles on January 16, and were in high glee at our progress.  We camped, however, in amongst pressure ridges and huge crevasses, 14 miles from the Cloudmaker or mid-glacier depot.  We hoped next day to reach this depot.  January 16 was a pleasant day, its ending peaceful, with a sufficiency of excellent sledging rations and the promise of a similar day to succeed it.  On this day hopes had run high; our clothes were dry, the weather mild and promising, besides which, we were camped in the full satisfaction of having a good many miles in hand.  We cheerfully discussed our arrival at the next depot, after which we knew that no anxieties need be felt, given even moderately good luck and weather, that did not include too great a proportion of blizzard days.  The musical roar of the primus and the welcome smell of the cooking pemmican whetted our appetites deliciously, and as the three of us