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When the blizzard eventually abated we had hazy weather, but got an occasional glimpse of the sun, with which we corrected our course, and on the 13th January my party found itself right above the Shackleton Icefalls, and gazed down upon the more regular surface of the Beardmore Glacier hundreds of feet below us.
The whole forenoon we worked down towards the more even surface of the great glacier itself, but the actual descent of the steep part of the Shackleton Icefalls was accomplished in half an hour. We came down many hundred feet in that time. None of us can ever forget that exciting descent. The speed of the sledge at one point must have been 60 miles an hour.
It was a matter of policy to go with caution, and a thing of some moment to hear the thud and splintering of little distant icefalls about one in the darkness. Now and again a cold arrow of wind would sing down from the frosty peaks above or jerk with a squiggle of laughter among the fallen slabs in the valley. And these were the only voices to prick me on through a dreariness lonely as death.
To reach the glacier we were faced with two alternatives: either to march right round the icefalls, as we had done coming south, and thus waste three whole days, or to take our lives in our hands and attempt to get the sledge slap over the falls. This would mean facing tremendous drops, which might end in a catastrophe.
In youth the glacier develops icefalls, as a river in youth develops waterfalls, and its bed becomes terraced with great stairs. The mature glacier, like the mature river, has effaced its falls and smoothed its bed to grade. It has also worn back the projecting spurs of its valley, making itself a wide channel with smooth sides.
But the crevasses and icefalls have been overcome, the travelling is better, and with nothing but the hard, white horizon before us, thoughts wander away to the homeland sweet little houses with well-kept gardens, glowing fires on bright hearths, clean, snowy tablecloths and polished silver, and then the dimpled, smiling faces of those we are winning our spurs for.
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