hed,
unless the cold were very intense. In the extremities--the fingers and
toes--warmth was not so easily restored.

Returning from attending the instruments at noon on May 22, Madigan,
according to the usual habit, before taking off his wind-proof clothes,
commenced clearing away the ice adhering to his helmet and face. One
white patch refused to leave the side of his face, until some one
observed that it was a frost-bite, and acquainted him of the fact.
Frost-bites that day were excusable enough, for the wind was blowing
between ninety-five and hundred miles per hour, there was dense drifting
snow and a temperature of -28 degrees F.

We had found an accursed country. On the fringe of an unspanned
continent along whose gelid coast our comrades had made their home--we
knew not where--we dwelt where the chill breath of a vast, Polar
wilderness, quickening to the rushing might of eternal blizzards, surged
to the northern seas. Already, and for long months we were beneath
"frost-fettered Winter's frown."

CHAPTER VIII DOMESTIC LIFE

Our hearth and home was the living Hut and its focus was the stove.
Kitchen and stove were indissolubly linked, and beyond their pale was
a wilderness of hanging clothes, boots, finnesko, mitts and what not,
bounded by tiers of bunks and blankets, more hanging clothes and dim
photographs between the frost-rimed cracks of the wooden walls.

One might see as much in the first flicker of the acetylene through a
maze of hurrying figures, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the light,
the plot would thicken: books orderly and disorderly, on bracketed
shelves, cameras great and small in motley confusion, guns and a
gramophone-horn, serpentine yards of gas-tubing, sewing machines,
a microscope, rows of pint-mugs, until--thud! he has obstructed a
wild-eyed messman staggering into the kitchen with a box of ice.

The wilderness was always inhabited, so much so that it often became a
bear-garden in which raucous good humour prevailed over everything.

Noise was a necessary evil, and it commenced at 7.30 A.M., with the
subdued melodies of the gramophone, mingled with the stirring of the
porridge-pot and the clang of plates deposited none too gently on
the table. At 7.50 A.M. came the stentorian: "Rise and shine!" of the
night-watchman, and a curious assortment of cat-calls, beating on pots
and pans and fragmentary chaff. At the background, so to speak, of all
these sounds was the swishing rus