He held on tight, and somehow Crean and I wriggled off the bridge, sticking our crampons firmly into the ice and crawling up to where Lashly was.  We all three held on to the Alpine line, and in some extraordinary fashion got to the top of the ridge, where we anchored ourselves and prepared to haul up the sledge.  As I said before, it weighed about 400 lb., and to three exhausted men the strain which came upon us when we hauled the sledge off the bridge tested us to the limit of our strength.  The wretched thing slipped sideways and capsized on the slope, nearly dragging us down into that icy chasm, but our combined efforts saved us, and once again the perils of the moment were forgotten as we got into our sledge harness and started to make the best of our way to the depot.

By now we were exhausted, rudely shaken, and our eyes were smarting with the glare and the glint of the sun’s reflections from that awful maze of ice falls.  I felt my heart would burst from the sustained effort of launching that sledge, which now seemed to weigh a ton.  There seemed no way out of this confused mass of pressure ridges and, crevasses.  We were “all out,” and come what may I had to change our tactics, accordingly I ordered a halt.  No room could be found to pitch our tent and I could not see any possibility of saving my party.  We could stagger on no farther with the dreadfully heavy sledge.  The prospect was hopeless and our food was nearly gone.  Some rest must be obtained to give us strength for this absolute battle for life.  The great strain of the day’s efforts had thoroughly exhausted us, and it took me back to the last day of the December blizzard which caused the eventual loss of the Polar Party and the ruin of Captain Scott’s so excellently laid plans.  I remembered the poor ponies after their fourteen hours’ march, their flanks heaving, their black eyes dull, shrivelled and wasted.  The poor beasts had stood, with their legs stuck out in strange attitudes, mere wrecks of the beautiful little animals that we took away from New Zealand, and I could not help likening our condition to theirs on that painful day.  The three of us sat on the sledge—­hollow-eyed and gaunt looking.  We were done, our throats were dry, and we could scarcely speak.  There was no wind, the atmosphere was perfectly still, and the sun slowly crept towards the southern meridian, clear cut in the steel blue sky.  It gave us all the sympathy it could, for it shed warm rays upon us as it silently moved on its way like a great eye from Heaven, looking but unable to help.  We should have gone mad with another day like this, and there were times when we came perilously close to being insane.  Something had to be done.  I got up from the sledge, cast my harness adrift, and said, “I am going to look for a way out; we can’t go on.”  My companions at first persuaded me not to go, but I pointed out that we could not continue in our exhausted condition.  If only we could find a camping place, and we could rest, perhaps we should be able to make a final effort to get clear.