some old bricks
and a grid, and there was an open blubber fire in the middle of the
floor. There was no outlet for the smoke and smuts and it was impossible
to see your neighbour, to speak without coughing, or to open your eyes
long before they began to smart. Atkinson and Crean had cleared the floor
of ice in our absence, but the space between the lower and upper roofs
was solid with blue ice, and the lower roof sagged down in places in a
dangerous way. The wind howled continuously and to say that the hut was
cold is a very mild expression of the reality.

This hut was built by the Discovery Expedition, who themselves lived in
the ship which lay off the shore frozen into the sea-ice, as a workroom
and as a refuge in case of shipwreck. It was useful to them in some ways,
but was too large to heat with the amount of coal available, and was
rather a white elephant. Scott wrote of it that "on the whole our large
hut has been and will be of use to us, but its uses are never likely to
be of such importance as to render it indispensable, nor cause it to be
said that circumstances have justified the outlay made on it, or the
expenditure of space and trouble in bringing it to its final home. It is
here now, however, and here it will stand for many a long year with such
supplies as will afford the necessaries of life to any less fortunate
party who may follow in our footsteps and be forced to search for food
and shelter."[126]

Well! It was to be more useful to Scott in 1910 to 1913 than he imagined
in 1902. We found the place with its verandah complete, the remains of
the two magnetic huts and a rubbish heap. It was wonderful what that
rubbish heap yielded up. Bricks to build a blubber stove, a sheet of iron
to put over the top of it, a length of stove piping to form a chimney.
Somehow somebody made cement, and built the bricks together, and one of
the magnetic huts gave up its asbestos sheeting to insulate the chimney
from the woodwork of the roofs. An old door made a cook's table, old
cases turned upside down made seats. The provisions left by the Discovery
were biscuits contained in some forty large packing cases. These we piled
up across the middle of our house as a bulkhead and the old Discovery
winter awning was dug out of the snow outside and fixed against the wall
thus made to keep the warmth in. At night we cleared the floor space and
spread our bags.

[Illustration: HUT POINT FROM OBSERVATION HILL]

The two preci