perimenting before it reached this
satisfactory state. With certain winds we were nearly choked with a
black, oily smoke that hurt our eyes and brought on much the same
symptoms as accompany snow-blindness.

"We take it in turns to be cook and messman, working in pairs: Abbott and
I, Levick and Browning, Priestley and Dickason, and thus each has one day
on in three. The duties of the cooks are to turn out at 7 and cook and
serve out the breakfast, the others remaining in their bags for the meal.
Then we all have a siesta till 10.30, when we turn out for the day's
work: The cook starts the blubber stove and melts blubber for the lamps.
The mess-man takes an ice-axe and chips frozen seal meat in the passage
by the light of a blubber lamp. A cold job this and trying to the temper,
as scraps of meat fly in all directions and have to be care-fully
collected afterwards. The remainder carry up the meat and blubber, or
look for seals. By 5 p.m. all except the cooks are in their bags, and we
have supper. After supper the cooks melt ice for the morning, prepare
breakfast, and clear up."

"May 7.--A blizzard with heavy drift has been blowing all day, so it was
a good job we got the penguins. We have got the roof on the shaft now,
but in these blizzards the entrance is buried in snow, and we have a job
to keep the shaft clear. Priestley has found his last year's journal, and
reads some to us every evening.

"From now till the end of the month strong gales again reduced our
outside work to a minimum, and most of our energies were directed to
improving our domestic routine.

"We have now a much better method for cutting up the meat for the hoosh.
Until now we had to take the frozen joints and hack them in pieces with
an ice-axe. We have now fixed up an empty biscuit tin on a bamboo tripod
over the blubber fire. The small pieces of meat we put in this to thaw:
the larger joints hang from the bamboo. In this way they thaw
sufficiently in the twenty-four hours to cut up with a knife, and we find
this cleaner and more economical.

"We celebrated two special occasions on this month, my wedding day on the
10th, and the anniversary, to use a paradox, of the commissioning of the
hut on the 17th, and each time the commissariat officer relaxed his hold
to the extent of ten raisons each.

"Levick is saving his biscuit to see how it feels to go without cereals
for a week. He also wants to have one real good feed at the end of the