When the photographer had quietly and leisurely finished his work —­ he got a remarkably good picture of the scene —­ the other two together raised the sledge, and the journey was continued.  It was at this crevasse that we entered his Majesty’s Ballroom.  The surface did not really look bad.  True, the snow was blown away, which made it difficult to advance, but we did not see many cracks.  There were a good many pressure-masses, as already mentioned, but even in the neighbourhood of these we could not see any marked disturbance.  The first sign that the surface was more treacherous than it appeared to be was when Hanssen’s leading dogs went right through the apparently solid floor.  They remained hanging by their harness, and were easily pulled up again.  When we looked through the hole they had made in the crust, it did not give us the impression of being very dangerous, as, 2 or 3 feet below the outer crust, there lay another surface, which appeared to consist of pulverized ice.  We assumed that this lower surface was the solid one, and that therefore there was no danger in falling through the upper one.  But Bjaaland was able to tell us a different story.  He had, in fact, fallen through the outer crust, and was well on his way through the inner one as well, when he got hold of a loop of rope on his sledge and saved himself in the nick of time.  Time after time the dogs now fell through, and time after time the men went in.  The effect of the open space between the two crusts was that the ground under our feet sounded unpleasantly hollow as we went over it.  The drivers whipped up their dogs as much as they could, and with shouts and brisk encouragement they went rapidly over the treacherous floor.  Fortunately this curious formation was not of great extent, and we soon began to observe a change for the better as we came up the ridge.  It soon appeared that the Ballroom was the glacier’s last farewell to us.  With it all irregularities ceased, and both surface and going improved by leaps and bounds, so that before very long we had the satisfaction of seeing that at last we had really conquered all these unpleasant difficulties.  The surface at once became fine and even, with a splendid covering of snow everywhere, and we went rapidly on our way to the south with a feeling of security and safety.

CHAPTER XII

At the Pole

In lat. 87deg.  S. —­ according to dead reckoning —­ we saw the last of the land to the north-east.  The atmosphere was then apparently as clear as could be, and we felt certain that our view covered all the land there was to be seen from that spot.  We were deceived again on this occasion, as will be seen later.  Our distance that day (December 4) was close upon twenty-five miles; height above the sea, 10,100 feet.