Page:South - the story of Shackleton's last expedition, 1914-1917.djvu/171

 and camping; no washing of self or dishes, no undressing, no changing of clothes. We have our food anyhow, and always impregnated with blubber-smoke; sleeping almost on the bare snow and working as hard as the human physique is capable of doing on a minimum of food."

We marched on, with one halt at 6 a.m., till half-past eleven. After a supper of seal steaks and tea we turned in. The surface now was pretty bad. High temperatures during the day made the upper layers of snow very soft, and the thin crust which formed at night was not sufficient to support a man. Consequently, at each step we went in over our knees in the soft wet snow. Sometimes a man would step into a hole in the ice which was hidden by the covering of snow, and be pulled up with a jerk by his harness. The sun was very hot and many were suffering from cracked lips.

Two seals were killed to-day. Wild and McIlroy, who went out to secure them, had rather an exciting time on some very loose, rotten ice, three killer-whales in a lead a few yards away poking up their ugly heads as if in anticipation of a feast.

Next day, December 26, we started off again at 1 a.m. "The surface was much better than it has been for the last few days, and this is the principal thing that matters. The route, however, lay over very hummocky floes, and required much work with pick and shovel to make it passable for the boat-sledges. These are handled in relays by eighteen men under Worsley. It is killing work on soft surfaces."

At 5 a.m. we were brought up by a wide open lead after an unsatisfactorily short march. While we waited, a meal of tea and two small bannocks was served, but as 10 a.m. came and there were no signs of the lead closing we all turned in.

It snowed a little during the day and those who were sleeping outside got their sleeping-bags pretty wet.

At 9.30 p.m. that night we were off again. I was, as usual, pioneering in front, followed by the cook and his mate pulling a small sledge with the stove and all the cooking gear on. These two, black as two Mohawk Minstrels with the blubber-soot, were dubbed "Potash and Perlmutter." Next come the dog teams, who