Critical as our position was, we were cheered by the thought that we were still getting south, but the sledges were being badly damaged by the continual ice-work, and as there were still 340 geographical miles between us and the Pole, we longed for a surface which was a little less like walking over a cucumber-frame. Of all the surfaces on which to travel, none can be more irritating than that of rotten ice through which one's feet are everlastingly breaking. On such a surface, however, we could make a certain amount of progress, and it was not until December 12 that we met with conditions which reduced our progress for the day to a miserable three miles. Sharp-edge blue ice full of chasms and crevasses, and rising to hills and sinking into gullies, provided us with obstacles unequalled in any polar work for difficulty in travelling. Under such circumstances we had to have recourse to relay work, for we could only take on one sledge at a time, two of us pulling while the others steadied and held the sledge to keep it straight. In this way we advanced for a mile, and then returned over the crevasses and hauled up the other sledges over a surface where often and often a slip meant death. In such rough-and-tumble work the sledges naturally suffered, and the one with the broken bow frequently striking against hard, sharp ice, pulled us up with a jerk and flung us down. In all our difficulties and dangers, however, we found solace in the thought that the glacier must eventually end and our longed-for plateau be reached. By December 16 we had crossed nearly one hundred miles of crevassed ice and risen 6000 ft. on the largest glacier in the world, and on the following afternoon we burned our boats behind us as regards warm clothing, and made a depot of everything except the barest necessities. But relay work still hampered our progress towards our goal, and no thirsty man ever longed for water with more eagerness than we longed for the plateau and the end of that vast glacier. CHAPTER XXVI ON THE PLATEAU TO THE FARTHEST SOUTH Never do I expect to meet anything more tantalising than the plateau on which our hopes were set. By December 18 I thought that we were almost up, and yet we had to go on and on, apparently unable to get rid of the crevasses. By this time we were fully conscious that food was to be the key to our success or failure to reach the Pole, and we began to save food in order to spin it out, a saving which made us almost ravenous with hunger. Each day we saved two biscuits per man, and also some pemmican and sugar, and we tried to satisfy our hunger by eating pony maize, which we soaked in water to make it less hard. If only dreams prevented one from hunger we should have been well off, for each night we all dreamed of foods.