y indoors and exercise keeps us all the fitter.

The falling light and approach of supper drives us home again with
good appetites about 5 or 6 o'clock, and then the cooks rival one
another in preparing succulent dishes of fried seal liver. A single
dish may not seem to offer much opportunity of variation, but a lot
can be done with a little flour, a handful of raisins, a spoonful of
curry powder, or the addition of a little boiled pea meal. Be this as
it may, we never tire of our dish and exclamations of satisfaction
can be heard every night--or nearly every night, for two nights ago
[April 4] Wilson, who has proved a genius in the invention of 'plats,'
almost ruined his reputation. He proposed to fry the seal liver
in penguin blubber, suggesting that the latter could be freed from
all rankness. The blubber was obtained and rendered down with great
care, the result appeared as delightfully pure fat free from smell;
but appearances were deceptive; the 'fry' proved redolent of penguin,
a concentrated essence of that peculiar flavour which faintly lingers
in the meat and should not be emphasised. Three heroes got through
their pannikins, but the rest of us decided to be contented with
cocoa and biscuit after tasting the first mouthful. After supper we
have an hour or so of smoking and conversation--a cheering, pleasant
hour--in which reminiscences are exchanged by a company which has
very literally had world-wide experience. There is scarce a country
under the sun which one or another of us has not travelled in, so
diverse are our origins and occupations. An hour or so after supper
we tail off one by one, spread out our sleeping-bags, take off our
shoes and creep into comfort, for our reindeer bags are really warm
and comfortable now that they have had a chance of drying, and the
hut retains some of the heat generated in it. Thanks to the success
of the blubber lamps and to a fair supply of candles, we can muster
ample light to read for another hour or two, and so tucked up in our
furs we study the social and political questions of the past decade.

We muster no less than sixteen. Seven of us pretty well cover the floor
of one wing of the L-shaped enclosure, four sleep in the other wing,
which also holds the store, whilst the remaining five occupy the annexe
and affect to find the colder temperature more salubrious. Everyone
can manage eight or nine hours' sleep without a break, and not a few
would have little difficulty