On the other hand, as regards our ultimate personal safety, our position was rather critical. In the first place, we were not even certain that the Nimrod had arriven in Ross Sea; in the second place, assuming that she had, if was quite possible that she would miss sighting our depot flags altogether.
In the event of the ship not appearing within a few days, it would have been necessary to take immediate action with a view either to winter at the Drygalski depot or to an attempt to sledge over the steeply crevassed glacier for over 200 miles to Cape Royds.
Even at the moment, had some immediate strenuous action been necessary from the Nimrod suddenly appearing, I thought that it would be best for Mawson, who was less physically exhausted than I was, to be in charge.
He had, throughout the whole journey, shown excellent capacity for leadership, and when I spoke to him he at first demurred, but finally said he would act for a time.
At first we thought that there was one very difficult but apparently possible means of ascent up the cliff face; our efforts, however, in this direction were doomed to failure, and we were compelled to retrace our steps up the ravine down which we had previously lowered the sledge.
This was a tremendous labour, for we could only force the sledge up a few inches at a time; eventually, however, we found ourselves on the level plain at the top of the ravine, but, of course, on the wrong side as far as our depot was concerned. There we thought it safe to camp, for we were within three miles of the open sea, and had the Nimrod sighted our depot flag and stood in to the coast, we could easily have hurried down to the entrance of the inlet and made signals to her.
At 7 A.M. we turned in after toiling for twenty-three hours, and at about a quarter-past seven, as we learnt later, the Nimrod must have passed; but owing to a light wind with snow drift she was unable to sight either our depot flag or tent.
Having had four hours' rest we packed our sledge and started along the north bank of the snow gorge, the snow and ice at the bottom being dotted with basking seals and moulting Emperor penguins.
At first, in our tired and weak state, we were much dispirited to find no means of crossing the ravine, but eventually Mackay, who had gone ahead, shouted that he had discovered a snow-bridge across it, and when he had rejoined us we pulled the sledge to the head of the bridge.
There was a crevasse at both the near and far ends of the bridge, and stepping over the crevasse at the near end we launched the sledge with a run down to the centre of the bridge and then struggled up the steep slope facing us, Mackay steadying the sledge from falling off the narrow causeway, while all of us pulled for all we were worth.