It was also obvious to us, from what we had seen looking out to sea to the east of our camp, that there were large bodies of open water at no great distance from us trending shorewards in the form of long lanes. The lanes of water were only partly frozen over, and some of these were interposed between us and the Drygalski Glacier.
Not a moment was to be lost if we were to reach the glacier before the sea-ice broke up, for one strong blizzard would have converted the whole of the sea-ice between us and the glacier into a mass of drifting pack.
The thing, indeed, for us to do was to push on with all our might, and still with slushy surfaces to hinder us we pulled and tramped until—on the 28th—we came to a point where for some time it seemed as if our progress further north was completely blocked. Eventually, however, we found a place where the ice might just bear our sledges, and, having strengthened it by laying down slabs of sea-ice and shovelfuls of snow, we rushed our sledges over safely. Extremely thankful were we to get them over to the other side, for the ice was so thin that it bent under our weight, and once Mackay broke through and very nearly got a ducking.
Next we had to encounter some very high sastrugi of hard tough snow, and as these were nearly at right-angles to our course, the work of dragging our sledges over them was very distressing. And after the sastrugi we met with an ice-surface which kept continually cracking as we passed over it, with a noise like that of a whip being cracked.
We were unable by this time to talk about anything but cereal foods, such as cakes of various kinds and fruits, for we were very short of biscuits and were consequently seized with food obsessions.
The sun, however, which had during the afternoons considerable heating power, and in one way was hindering us by making the surfaces so slushy, helped us in another way. For when I put some snow into our aluminium cooking-pot and exposed it for several hours—while we were camping—to the direct rays of the suns, I was glad to find that half the snow was thawed down, a result that, of course, saved us both paraffin and blubber.
The Northern Party on the Plateau, New Year's Day, 1909. (See page 211)
On the 30th the ice ridges fronting us became higher and steeper, and strain we ever so mightily we could scarcely get the sledges to move up the steep ice slopes, and the sledges also skidded a good deal as we dragged them obliquely upwards.
The glacier was now spread before us as a great billowy sea of pale green ice, with here and there high embankments of marble-like névé resembling railway embankments. Unfortunately for our progress, the trend of the latter was nearly at right-angles to our course, and as we advanced the undulations became more and more pronounced, the embankments higher and steeper.