r the strain of living
through that winter.

The sunlight went at the beginning of May, gradually leaving them with
those peculiar drawn-out half lights, which we all grew to know so
well--the whimpering purple clouds, the sad-looking hills, and the
desolate ice slopes and snow drifts--the six men were imprisoned with
sullen hills and unassailable mountains for jailers, until they had
undergone their sentence--the sea their chief jailer, for the sea had set
them there and it was for the sea to decide on the time of their release.

Boots had long since given out, and they had to guard against ruining
their finneskoe or it would have been good-bye to any sledging round to
Cape Evans when the sea did freeze. Seal blubber was utilised for
cooking, and whenever seals were killed the chunks of this greasy stuff
had to be carried to the igloo on the men's backs--this meant that their
clothes soon smelt very badly, which circumstance added to the misery of
their living conditions.

On May 6 Campbell's party sustained a severe disappointment, for they saw
what appeared to be four men coming towards them. Immediately they jumped
to the conclusion that the ship had been frozen in and that this was a
search party. The four figures turned out to be Emperor penguins, and
although disappointing in one way they served to replenish the larder,
and so had their use.

Here are three specimen diary pages extracted from Campbell's journey:

April 9.--Warmer to-day. We saw a small seal on a floe but were unable to
reach him. The bay remains open still. On the still days a thin film of
ice forms, but blows out as soon as the wind comes up. In these early
days, before we had perfected our cooking and messing arrangements, a
great part of our day was taken up with cooking and preparing the food,
but later on we got used to the ways of a blubber stove, and things went
more smoothly. We had landed all our spare paraffin from the ship, and
this gave us enough oil to use the primus for breakfast, provided we
melted the ice over the blubber fire the day before. The blubber stove
was made of an old oil tin cut down. In this we put some old seal bones
taken from the carcasses we found on the beach.

"A piece of blubber skewered on to a marline-spike and held over the
flame dripped oil on the bones and fed the fire. In this way we could
cook hoosh nearly as quickly as we could on the primus. Of course the
stove took several weeks of ex